K

This weekend Kat took me out to "K" because Adam worked on it and, quite frankly, I like theatre despite my inability to get out to many shows.

In "K", we view a very stylized view of Kafka's last days/memories. A Danish production, brought over here by the same company using local actors, stage hands, etc.

First and foremost, this play reminded me heavily of a piece I wrote in Directing/Scriptwriting 12 years ago. I wrote this pretentious art-fuck piece about a girl having a dream about her father climbing a ladder, falling off of it into a black hole and eventually finding the devil and having some interaction there. I thought it was the most contrived piece of writing I've put to paper. Somehow, it was praised by my then theatre instructor. ...?...

The acting was by and large impressive. James Long is on stage performing the whole time in a monologue that is interupted by "visions" or reality. A 90 minute presentation is not an easy feat and on closing night he had his part down pat. I think one of my favourite aspects of theatre is that they can fuck up and that would be super cool. There were moments where I questioned the pacing of the dialogue (too great of a gap, punchline delivered a little off) but there were no sightly errors in the acting. The blocking wasn't all the way there. Several times actors were turned away while speaking their dialogue and often moments where expressions/physical responses were lost from actors looking away from the audience. One Ensemble member wandered off out of context at one point.

Aesthetically, it was awesome. The audience walked in to an open stage with only a huge wall of silver filing cabinet drawers. That's it. The wall is designed with a closet, a set of double doors, four windows, and a row of drawer handles sturdy enough to carry Long up the wall. The double doors release Kafka's hospital bed which provides the focus of the show. With the use of projectors, lighting and dry ice I had missed a few moments of stage transformation through distraction.

And now onto the plot of "K". While a storyline was there, I definately felt as though it was a poetic play with symbolisms that I couldn't get for the life of me (such as "Why are they walking backwards? All the time?"). I'll admit ignorance and stupidity when it came to understanding the intent of many of the overt symbolisms. I take great pride in my bullshiting skills with analyzing print materials, but on stage I've got no clue. I recognized Lilith's importance early on, why everyone was walking around "aimlessly", and some of the other small symbolic charcters. Perhaps I needed to read the stage directions. Anyone who had seen it care to explain a few things? Why was the assistant doctor repeating/echoing the words of everyone else? Why were they walking backwards? Why was the doctor acting like a broken record?

Arbitrary score of 864. Thanks for taking me Kat, and I still owe you for the ticket.