Kafka’s Ape is an adaptation of Franz Kafka’s short story A Report to an Academy, directed by Phala Ookeditse Phala and performed by Tony Bonani Miyambo.

Following an invitation of Kafka's Ape by the University of Toronto and the University of Western Cape, the award-winning play was staged and live-streamed at The Centre for the Less Good Idea in April 2021 as part of both The Centre’s For Once programme and A Kafka Moment, a mini-season of works based on, or inspired by, the writings of Franz Kafka.

Kafka’s Ape is a play that takes a metaphorical view on South African society through the eyes of an ‘evolving’ primate who is made to present a formal report on his attempts at mimicking human nature. Through this extended metaphor, the play also highlights the complexities of identity in post-apartheid South Africa and among the human race more broadly. Since its inception over a decade ago, Kafka’s Ape has travelled to countries across the globe and has been performed alongside a plethora of critical moments in recent history. The realities of xenophobia, racism, animal cruelty, genocide, and more have all been absorbed and grappled with by the play throughout its years of touring.

While Kafka’s Ape is a rich adaptation of a profound and wide-ranging text, a great deal of the play’s effectiveness lies in its physical performance. A minimalist set and prop list allows Miyambo to utilise the extent of the stage – populated only by a speaker’s podium and a simple steel frame bearing the conference banner – and more convincingly embody the character of the ape known as Red Peter. From the moment that Miyambo enters the stage and addresses the audience, he adopts the low gait, the laboured breath, the erratic mannerisms and particularities, and the existential sufferings of his character. Similarly, simple yet pointed lighting and sound design serve to mark and enhance the play’s lighter or more macabre moments in equal measure.

Brief, playful interludes involving audience interaction serve to give pause to the weighty nature of the ‘report’ being given, while reminding those seated and watching the play that they are witness to, or perhaps even complicit in, the anguish and oppression that Red Peter labours under. The tormented cries of an ape being caged or wounded, or the frightening act of downing a bottle of alcohol in an early attempt at mimicking his capturers punctuate the narrative at key moments throughout the performance, returning always to the key themes in Kafka’s Ape – otherness, inhumanity, alienation, dissociation, and the unbearable reality of not being at home in one’s own body.

While Kafka’s original story tests the notions of identity, assimilation, and survival, Phala and Miyambo’s adaptation and staging of the text ultimately reckons with the unending complexities of identity in the contemporary world. It is a performance that, through the seemingly simple binaries of human and animal, begins to pick apart the complicated relationship between the self and the other, and the self as other. It is when the lines between the two begin to grow unclear, that Kafka’s Ape is brought to life.

– David Mann

CREDITS:

PERFORMER | Tony Bonani Miyambo
DIRECTOR | Phala Ookeditse Phala
ADAPTED FROM | A Report to an Academy by Franz Kafka
ADAPTED BY | Phala Ookeditse Phala
STAGE MANAGERS | Dimakatso Motholo & Nthabiseng Malaka
CINEMATOGRAPHER | Kutlwano Makgalemele

The short-form work Odradek, performed by Ameera Patel, Bongile Lecoge-Zulu, and Clare Loveday, uses the shrewd and carnivalesque optics of the Pepper’s Ghost. In Odradek, costuming, projection, and live music and performance are used to tell the tale of the strange, lingering creature in Franz Kafka’s short story, The Cares of a Family Man. Narration takes place literally and abstractly, using voice, projection, and responsive music to pull at the etymological threads of the name “Odradek”, while the creature itself performs atop a stack of books, bristling in a tangle of strings and papers, here one minute, and gone the next.

A Kafka Moment is a mini-season of select works that were created or performed at The Centre for the Less Good Idea, and prompted by the writings of Franz Kafka.

Taking place at The Centre in April 2021 and leveraged off of an invitation of Kafka's Ape by the University of Toronto, Canada and the University of Western Cape, the mini-season was spread across two evenings, each featuring a unique programme of performances, staged for a limited live audience and live-streamed for free on The Centre’s YouTube channel.

Performers included Ameera Patel, Clare Loveday, Bongile Gorata Lecoge-Zulu, Jane Taylor, Antony Coleman, Sue Pam-Grant, Kevin Smith, Michael Mazibuko, Dan Selsick and Tony Bonani Miyambo.

Using the comical, grotesque, existential, and frighteningly prophetic writings of Kafka as a springboard, the performances that make up A Kafka Moment are at once experimental and macabre, playful and surreal. At the core of each programme is an attempt at puzzling out the nature of the short-form on stage – the activity of reading aloud, the embodiment of the short story in the performer, or the testing of new ideas through hybrid analogue and digital forms.

– David Mann

CREDITS:

PERFORMERS | Ameera Patel, Bongile Lecoge-Zulu & Clare Loveday
ADAPTED FROM | The Cares of a Family Man by Franz Kafka
ADAPTED BY | Frances Slabolepszy & Ameera Patel
STAGE MANAGERS | Dimakatso Motholo & Nthabiseng Malaka

A direct staging of the short story, A Hunger Artist, the performance sees actor Michael Mazibuko playing the role of the narrator, while musician Dan Selsick accompanies the narrative with short, playful moments on the trombone. With nothing but a stool to sit on and an empty stage behind him (as well as a brief projection of an animated charcoal drawing by William Kentridge), Mazibuko recites, with striking empathy, the tale of Kafka’s fasting showman. Over the course of the performance, Selsick’s trombone morphs into something of a character itself, while also serving the very practical function of breaking up the staged story, disrupting the act of reading, and lending a sense of physical activity to the stage. Death, isolation, futility, and human relationships are some of the central themes of the work and, like many of Kafka’s stories, this is a tale that continues to find resonance in the world, particularly in the midst of a global health pandemic when many of the aforementioned themes are all too familiar.

A Kafka Moment is a mini-season of select works that were created or performed at The Centre for the Less Good Idea, and prompted by the writings of Franz Kafka.

Taking place at The Centre in April 2021 and leveraged off of an invitation of Kafka's Ape by the University of Toronto, Canada and the University of Western Cape, the mini-season was spread across two evenings, each featuring a unique programme of performances, staged for a limited live audience and live-streamed for free on The Centre’s YouTube channel.

Performers included Ameera Patel, Clare Loveday, Bongile Gorata Lecoge-Zulu, Jane Taylor, Antony Coleman, Sue Pam-Grant, Kevin Smith, Michael Mazibuko, Dan Selsick and Tony Bonani Miyambo.

Using the comical, grotesque, existential, and frighteningly prophetic writings of Kafka as a springboard, the performances that make up A Kafka Moment are at once experimental and macabre, playful and surreal. At the core of each programme is an attempt at puzzling out the nature of the short-form on stage – the activity of reading aloud, the embodiment of the short story in the performer, or the testing of new ideas through hybrid analogue and digital forms.

– David Mann

CREDITS:

PERFORMERS | Michael Mazibuko & Dan Selsick
DIRECTOR | William Kentridge
WRITER | Franz Kafka
STAGE MANAGERS | Dimakatso Motholo & Nthabiseng Malaka

A reading of Josephine the Songstress or The Mouse Folk by Jane Taylor is one of the final performances of the programme. The short story was the very last written by Kafka before he died, and is read by Taylor alongside a simple yet affecting video projection. The relationship between performer and audience, the presence and subsequent rippling effects of art in the world, and the notions of value, interpretation and the human condition are all present in the reading of Kafka’s story, sensitively delivered by Taylor.

A Kafka Moment is a mini-season of select works that were created or performed at The Centre for the Less Good Idea, and prompted by the writings of Franz Kafka.

Taking place at The Centre in April 2021 and leveraged off of an invitation of Kafka's Ape by the University of Toronto, Canada and the University of Western Cape, the mini-season was spread across two evenings, each featuring a unique programme of performances, staged for a limited live audience and live-streamed for free on The Centre’s YouTube channel.

Performers included Ameera Patel, Clare Loveday, Bongile Gorata Lecoge-Zulu, Jane Taylor, Antony Coleman, Sue Pam-Grant, Kevin Smith, Michael Mazibuko, Dan Selsick and Tony Bonani Miyambo.

Using the comical, grotesque, existential, and frighteningly prophetic writings of Kafka as a springboard, the performances that make up A Kafka Moment are at once experimental and macabre, playful and surreal. At the core of each programme is an attempt at puzzling out the nature of the short-form on stage – the activity of reading aloud, the embodiment of the short story in the performer, or the testing of new ideas through hybrid analogue and digital forms.

– David Mann

CREDITS:

READING BY | Jane Taylor
TEXT | Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk by Franz Kafka
STAGE MANAGERS | Dimakatso Motholo & Nthabiseng Malaka

A Common Confusion sees a trio of performers, namely Sue Pam-Grant, Kevin Smith, and Antony Coleman, grappling with Kafka’s short story by the same name. Kitted in out in matching blue coats, white dress shirts, grey slacks and black boots, the three flit between slick, synchronised choreography and sharp bursts of comedic narration. Muddled instructions, the passing of time, and the existential yet slightly irreverent take on life and labour that Kafka is well-known for, all find resonance in this staging of A Common Confusion.

A Kafka Moment is a mini-season of select works that were created or performed at The Centre for the Less Good Idea, and prompted by the writings of Franz Kafka.

Taking place at The Centre in April 2021 and leveraged off of an invitation of Kafka's Ape by the University of Toronto, Canada and the University of Western Cape, the mini-season was spread across two evenings, each featuring a unique programme of performances, staged for a limited live audience and live-streamed for free on The Centre’s YouTube channel.

Performers included Ameera Patel, Clare Loveday, Bongile Gorata Lecoge-Zulu, Jane Taylor, Antony Coleman, Sue Pam-Grant, Kevin Smith, Michael Mazibuko, Dan Selsick and Tony Bonani Miyambo.

Using the comical, grotesque, existential, and frighteningly prophetic writings of Kafka as a springboard, the performances that make up A Kafka Moment are at once experimental and macabre, playful and surreal. At the core of each programme is an attempt at puzzling out the nature of the short-form on stage – the activity of reading aloud, the embodiment of the short story in the performer, or the testing of new ideas through hybrid analogue and digital forms.

– David Mann

CREDITS:

PERFORMERS | Sue Pam-Grant, Kevin Smith, Antony Coleman & Dan Selsick
WRITER | Franz Kafka
STAGE MANAGERS | Dimakatso Motholo & Nthabiseng Malaka

A brief interlude sees the showing of a work in progress by director of The Centre for the Less Good Idea, Bronwyn Lace. The video work, which is based on Kafka’s Metamorphosis and forms part of a larger installation produced for The Centre’s 7th Season, sees the mirrored and manipulated image of a wax-cast pelvis as it melts away. Vocal collaborations with Bongile Lecoge-Zulu as well as dual recordings of Lace narrating the short story in English and German lend the work a distinctly immersive and intimate quality, while also mining the themes of duality, otherness, and the mutual dichotomy between human and animal present in Kafka’s writing.

A Kafka Moment is a mini-season of select works that were created or performed at The Centre for the Less Good Idea, and prompted by the writings of Franz Kafka.

Taking place at The Centre in April 2021 and leveraged off of an invitation of Kafka's Ape by the University of Toronto, Canada and the University of Western Cape, the mini-season was spread across two evenings, each featuring a unique programme of performances, staged for a limited live audience and live-streamed for free on The Centre’s YouTube channel.

Performers included Ameera Patel, Clare Loveday, Bongile Gorata Lecoge-Zulu, Jane Taylor, Antony Coleman, Sue Pam-Grant, Kevin Smith, Michael Mazibuko, Dan Selsick and Tony Bonani Miyambo.

Using the comical, grotesque, existential, and frighteningly prophetic writings of Kafka as a springboard, the performances that make up A Kafka Moment are at once experimental and macabre, playful and surreal. At the core of each programme is an attempt at puzzling out the nature of the short-form on stage – the activity of reading aloud, the embodiment of the short story in the performer, or the testing of new ideas through hybrid analogue and digital forms.

– David Mann

CREDITS:

CONCEPT & ARTWORK BY | Bronwyn Lace in dialogue with Johannes Jaeger and the Zone Collective
SOUNDTRACK | Bronwyn Lace & Bongile Lecoge-Zulu
CINEMATOGRAPHER & EDITOR | Noah Cohen
STAGE MANAGERS | Dimakatso Motholo & Nthabiseng Malaka

The Zone, generously supported by the Art and Culture Section of Federal Ministry Republic of Austria, Arts, Culture, Civil Service and Sport

Taking place as part of the A Kafka Moment programme, this In Conversation is between founder of The Centre for the Less Good Idea William Kentridge, artist and academic Jane Taylor, Kafka’s Ape director Phala Ookeditse Phala, and its performer Tony Bonani Miyambo.

Over the course of the conversation the four reflect on working with Kafka’s texts, the life and work of the writer, the modalities of otherness and alienation on stage, and the changing nature of Kafka’s Ape­ – from its inception as a Master of Arts performance to its subsequent staging in venues across the globe. For Phala, who was born in Botswana and lives and works in South Africa, the impetus for the adaptation of Kafka’s short story involved “making sense of otherness”, a point that has a profound rootedness in the text.

The ability of the play to act as a membrane for current affairs is also discussed, in particular it’s changing points of reference and relation to the contemporary world. Performing the play alongside moments of global upheaval, discrimination, mourning, and more has provided Miyambo with the ability to make sense of the world by “observing and purging” through his character, and using the play as a changing space for interrogation of these moments.

Finally, the duality of human and animal nature is discussed, as is the recurring reality that’s present in Kafka’s stories: that of feeling painfully foreign within, and alienated from, one’s most private and intimate space – the body.

A Kafka Moment is a mini-season of select works that were created or performed at The Centre for the Less Good Idea, and prompted by the writings of Franz Kafka.

Taking place at The Centre in April 2021 and leveraged off of an invitation of Kafka's Ape by the University of Toronto, Canada and the University of Western Cape, the mini-season was spread across two evenings, each featuring a unique programme of performances, staged for a limited live audience and live-streamed for free on The Centre’s YouTube channel. Performers included Ameera Patel, Clare Loveday, Bongile Gorata Lecoge-Zulu, Jane Taylor, Antony Coleman, Sue Pam-Grant, Kevin Smith, Michael Mazibuko, Dan Selsick and Tony Bonani Miyambo.

Using the comical, grotesque, existential, and frighteningly prophetic writings of Kafka as a springboard, the performances that make up A Kafka Moment are at once experimental and macabre, playful and surreal. At the core of each programme is an attempt at puzzling out the nature of the short-form on stage – the activity of reading aloud, the embodiment of the short story in the performer, or the testing of new ideas through hybrid analogue and digital forms.

– David Mann

CREDITS:

CINEMATOGRAPHER & EDITOR | Noah Cohen
LIGHTING DESIGNER | Wesley France
SOUND DESIGNER | Zain Vally
STAGE MANAGER | Dimakatso Motholo & Nthabiseng Malaka