{"id":16293,"date":"2018-08-29T09:00:54","date_gmt":"2018-08-29T16:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=16293"},"modified":"2018-08-28T10:53:54","modified_gmt":"2018-08-28T17:53:54","slug":"ted-talk-meets-kafka-and-theatre-at-victoria-fringe-festival-performance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2018\/08\/29\/ted-talk-meets-kafka-and-theatre-at-victoria-fringe-festival-performance\/","title":{"rendered":"Ted Talk meets Kafka and theatre at Victoria Fringe Festival performance"},"content":{"rendered":"

What do you get when a TED Talk meets a short story? A theatre production born from Franz Kafka\u2019s German short story \u201cEin Bericht f\u00fcr eine Akademie.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kafka was known for using humour to address dark topics on a human level; thematically, those topics appealed to Austrian director Myriel Meissner, who chose Kafka\u2019s work to adapt into her theatre production How to Become a Human in 5 Years<\/i> because of the universal human themes the work tackles. The production is done in a unique way in the form of a TED Talk combined with theatre, says Meissner.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe whole thing started because I was searching for a show, or a theatre piece, that was kind of humorous and also sort of political in a way. It\u2019s the kind of work I like to do,\u201d says Meissner, who studied theatre performance at Lewis and Clark College in Portland.<\/p>\n

Kafka\u2019s work reaches people, she says, and allows both Meissner and audience members to reflect in ways that they might not necessarily feel comfortable doing without the humour.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cPeople kind of shut down more [when humour isn\u2019t there],\u201d says Meissner.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
How to Become a Human in 5 Years<\/em> reimagines Kafka by way of a TED Talk (photo provided).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Being from Austria, Meissner looked into some other German plays first but found that they tended to focus too much on German culture for an international show; she looked at American plays and found that they, too, were difficult to relate to on an international level.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAnd then I found Kafka,\u201d she says. \u201cHis texts are pretty universal. He\u2019s known for being an existentialist writer with pretty dark humour. I stumbled upon his texts and I loved it immediately.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kafka\u2019s short story, originally published in 1917, focuses on an ape named Red Peter who learns human skills to integrate himself into the human world. Sometimes stories, plays, and movies get very casually translated into another medium, becoming almost unrecognizable, but <\/b>Meissner says this production is relatively close to the original text and that she wanted to stay true to the language in Kafka\u2019s work.<\/p>\n

\u201cI started with a literal translation of the text, which is a lot about, \u2018Where can we use this?\u2019 and thinking about all the different meanings in Kafka\u2019s language that are usable,\u201d says Meissner. \u201cIt\u2019s one of the most important things about him.\u201d<\/p>\n

From Meissner\u2019s depiction of words on a page, her own creativity came knocking.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cFrom that, I built the concept for the show, which is this TED Talk,\u201d she says. \u201cThe whole concept is really basic.\u201d<\/p>\n

The title of the Kafka story, translated into English, is \u201cA Report to an Academy,\u201d so the medium needed to work for giving a presentation, says Meissner; she felt a TED Talk was perfect for that.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe TED Talk has this very funny medium of, \u2018We\u2019re going to talk spreading ideas… I don\u2019t really have much to tell you, but here\u2019s my story. And I don\u2019t really have anything scientific to tell you, or maybe not really what you want to hear,\u2019\u201d says Meissner.<\/p>\n

But Meissner didn\u2019t want the show to be just a TED Talk, so she combined the TED Talk format with the theatrical and storytelling elements above into How to Become a Human in 5 Years<\/i>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe TED Talk is the right frame, but the show really breaks out of it,\u201d says Meissner. \u201cIt was a very intimate work between a director and an actor.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

How to Become a Human in 5 Years<\/i>
\n(at the Victoria Fringe Festival)
\n<\/span>6:45 pm,\u00a0until Sunday, September 2
\n$9, Downtown Activity Centre
\n<\/span>intrepidtheatre.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What do you get when a TED Talk meets a short story? A theatre production born from Franz Kafka\u2019s German short story \u201cEin Bericht f\u00fcr eine Akademie.\u201d Kafka was known for using humour to address dark topics on a human level; thematically, those topics appealed to Austrian director Myriel Meissner, who chose Kafka\u2019s work to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16294,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,215],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts","category-august-29-2018"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16293"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16293\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16295,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16293\/revisions\/16295"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}