{"id":5201,"date":"2012-11-29T09:39:51","date_gmt":"2012-11-29T17:39:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=5201"},"modified":"2012-11-30T15:37:28","modified_gmt":"2012-11-30T23:37:28","slug":"new-kakfa-musical-set-for-world-premiere-in-victoria","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2012\/11\/29\/new-kakfa-musical-set-for-world-premiere-in-victoria\/","title":{"rendered":"New Kafka musical set for world premiere in Victoria"},"content":{"rendered":"

The BBC radio play Kafka the Musical<\/em>\u2014a show about famous German author Franz Kafka being approached by producers who try to have him star in a musical about himself\u2014is having its world premiere on stage here in Victoria on Friday.<\/p>\n

Kafka the Musical\u00a0<\/em>writer Murray Gold (also an award-winning playwright and musical director for Doctor Who<\/em>) says that everything in the play is a joke \u201cplaced by a malevolent cosmos,\u201d right down to the musical itself.<\/p>\n

\u201cKafka himself is really dead against a musical in the musical,\u201d says Gold.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Murray Gold brings the multi-layered Kafka the Musical to town (photo by Phil Watkins).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In real life, before dying of tuberculosis at 40, Kafka asked his best friend to destroy everything he had ever written. Against Kafka\u2019s dying wish, the friend published all of his works. In the play, Kafka is approached by a producer wanting to turn all that work into a musical starring Kafka as himself.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat’s what happens when your best friend betrays you,\u201d says Gold. \u201cPeople will come around in this stupid world we live in, the machine that will come in and convert something\u2014no matter how deep\u2014into something stupid, and shallow,\u201d says Gold.<\/p>\n

Without giving away too much, Gold describes the funny, and\u2014as the story progresses, increasingly dark\u2014content of the play.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s sex in it, there\u2019s torture in it, there\u2019s some sort of violence\u2014or implied violence\u2014there\u2019s cross-dressing, there\u2019s some singing, and then there is death,\u201d says Gold. \u201cAnd love. And kissing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gold hopes that the story of Kafka will leave an impression on people, like being on a drug that alters your perceptions and stays with you after you go back to your normal life.<\/p>\n

\u201cIts just good to have a personal experience,\u201d he says. \u201cTo me, that\u2019s what literature always was\u2014it was always a bit toxic. It would always infect you in a good way.\u201d<\/p>\n

The characters of Kafka the Musical<\/em> are all characters from Kafka\u2019s own life, each with complex relationships to the protagonist, says director Clayton Jevne.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s so dense,\u201d says Jevne. \u201cThe characters are so multi-layered. There\u2019s so many things going on; it\u2019s really multi-dimensional because we capture all of the insights they’ve had.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gold says that the main theme of the play is about the meaning of Kafka\u2019s life and how it relates to everyone.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is this weird sense that Kafka\u2019s life and death and just the fact that he existed is more important then what he wrote,\u201d says Gold. \u201cThere\u2019s this humanistic thing that\u2019s actually at the end of everything\u2014however weird and strange the world is, and however great your ability to express how weird and strange the world is, the thing that really matters is that you live. And whatever you did with your life, that you just lived.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kafka the Musical
\n<\/em>Until December 15
\n$12 students\/$16 adults
\nTheatre Inconnu, 1923 Fernwood Road
\ntheatreinconnu.com\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The BBC radio play Kafka the Musical\u2014a show about famous German author Franz Kafka being approached by producers who try to have him star in a musical about himself\u2014is having its world premiere on stage here in Victoria on Friday. Kafka the Musical\u00a0writer Murray Gold (also an award-winning playwright and musical director for Doctor Who) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5202,"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":[4,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts","category-webexclusive"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5201","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=5201"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5201\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5227,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5201\/revisions\/5227"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}