Aparát

Director and playwright Katharina Schmitt returns to the work of writer Franz Kafka after staging A Report to the Academy (Studio Hrdinů, 2018). In her new project, The Apparatus, she explores the phenomenon of spectatorship, the observer’s relationship to reality, and their responsibility for their perspective.

The production is based on Franz Kafka’s short story In the Penal Colony. The text tells the story of a researcher who arrives at a penal colony in an unspecified country. Here, as the first foreigner in many years, he witnesses the execution of a convict. The officer in charge of the execution machine informs the researcher about the execution process and the decline in its significance under the new commander. During his explanation to the witness, the officer realizes his situation and, when the machine jams in front of the researcher’s eyes, he decides to release the convict, lie down in the machine, and ask the researcher to assist him in the execution. The officer suddenly becomes the condemned man, and the researcher’s seemingly detached gaze is burdened with unexpected responsibility.

The theatrical adaptation of the short story is a study of several apparatuses — the apparatus of the execution machine, the apparatus of power in the penal colony, and, last but not least, the apparatus of the gaze and the ways in which it intervenes in events. The penal colony becomes an archaeological site of gazes.

Katharina Schmitt collaborated on the production with set designer Pavel Svoboda, composer and sound designer Christoph Wirth, costume designer Patricia Talacko, and dramaturg Ján Šimko.

The project is being created in international cooperation with JOiN / Junge Oper Stuttgart.