On 1 October 2022, as part of William Kentridge’s major single artist exhibition at The Royal Academy’s Main Galleries, Kafka’s Ape was performed at the Royal Academy's Benjamin West Lecture Theatre.

Kafka’s Ape is an adaptation of Franz Kafka’s short story A Report to an Academy. It takes a metaphorical view of South African society through the representation of an ‘evolving’ primate who is made to present a report on his attempts to mimic human nature.

Directed by Phala Ookeditse Phala and performed by Tony Bonani Miyambo, Kafka’s Ape is a rich adaptation of a profound and wide-ranging text combined with a powerful physical performance. Miyambo embodies the character of the ape and the anguish and oppression that he labours under.

While Kafka’s original story tests the notions of identity, assimilation, and survival, Phala and Miyambo’s adaptation ultimately reckons with the unending complexities of identity in the contemporary world. It is a performance that continuously returns to the key themes of otherness, inhumanity, alienation, dissociation, and the unbearable reality of not being at home in one’s own body.

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.

Kafka’s Ape was developed in association with the Centre for the Less Good Idea.

Supported by Wendy Fisher and the A4 Arts Foundation.