Judging Executing Writing: The Theater

Although there are a number of attempts in contemporary theater practice to claim Kafka's texts for the stage, this attempt to deal with the subject of “Kafka and the theater” is more concerned with the anti-theatrical force in Kafka's deep and central orientation towards the scene, the staging and the theatricalization of our entire manageable life. In all his texts, Kafka opens up theatrical scenarios that reduce representation to the non-representable. Just as the characters in Kafka's “dramas” are withdrawing their appearance, the author removes the protagonists from his theater by making them incapable of acting and victims of circumstance, who in turn never stop questioning themselves. – “In der Strafkolonie [In the Penal Colony]” can serve as an example of this profoundly deconstructivist production of self-canceling artistic writing. Author (writer), main character (writer), and second main character (protecting and preserving the writing process) cancel each other out in the process of narration.