The Trial

• Theatre

by Franz Kafka / directed by Michael Thalheimer

„Somebody must have been telling lies about Josef K.” Set in the middle of the glamour and squalor of the 1920s, Franz Kafka’s literary masterpiece, ”The Trial”, is a parable for the disorientation of the individual and the untrustworthiness of perception. On his 30^th birthday, Josef K. is arrested by a mysterious authority planning to put him on trial. The bank clerk defends his innocence adamantly and finds himself sucked into a mire of inscrutable ordinances and human disarray. Seduction and obsequiousness, obedience and betrayal – in short: powerless individuals in the clutches of an almighty society – surround him. Feverishly, K. tries to distinguish between sense and nonsense. Trapped in a erratic system, he longs for self-efficacy and puts himself on trial by painstakingly studying the scales of his guilt and innocence.

Kafka’s “The Trial” was published as a posthumous fragment. The author died approximately 100 years ago, on June 3^rd, 1924. In his production of “The Trial”, director Michael Thalheimer focusses on the expectations and constraints that beset us all in the face of labyrinthine realities. Two years ago, Thalheimer finally returned to Thalia Theater with Schiller’s “The Robbers”. “The Trial” will be his first staging of a Kafka novel.

Duration 2h, without intermission

Premiere in November 2023, Thalia Theater