CIDRAL Public Lecture: Freddie Rokem: Reading Kafka/Staging Kafka
| Dates: | 25 May 2016 |
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| Times: | 17:00 - 19:00 |
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| What is it: | Lecture |
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| Organiser: | School of Arts, Languages and Cultures |
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| How much: | Free |
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| Who is it for: | University staff, Adults, Alumni, Current University students, General public, Post 16 |
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- THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELLED****
The lecture is part of CIDRAL's Semester 2 programme entitled Cultures and Temporalities. It is co-organised by CIDRAL, LIS, German Studies, Drama and the Centre for Jewish Studies.
Reading Kafka/Staging Kafka
Walter Benjamin's interpretation of Franz Kafka's work, published on the tenth anniversary of Kafka's death in 1934, is in part based on Benjamin's understanding of Brecht's ideas and practices of the theatre. And in reverse, in his answer to the question "What is Epic Theatre?" published five years later, Benjamin introduces the interruption which is more Kafkaesque than Brechtian. My presentation will explore what this strange interaction between Kafka and Brecht as mediated through the texts of Benjamin means; and how it has influenced two Israeli productions based on Kafka's texts.
Freddie Rokem is Professor (Emeritus) in the Department of Theatre at Tel Aviv University, where he was the Dean of the Faculty of the Arts (2002-2006) and held the Emanuel Herzikowitz Chair for 19th and 20th Century Art (2006-2016). His more recent books are Philosophers and Thespians: Thinking Performance (2010; translated into Italian and Polish; to appear in German and Hebrew); Jews and the Making of Modern German Theatre (2010, co-edited with Jeanette Malkin); Strindberg's Secret Codes (2004) and the prize-winning book Performing History: Theatrical Representations of the Past in Contemporary Theatre (2000; translated into German and Polish). He was the editor of Theatre Research International from 2006-2009, and is now co-editor of the Palgrave/Macmillan book series Performance Philosophy. He has been a visiting professor at many universities in the United States, Germany, Finland and Sweden and is also a dramaturg, most recently of an Israeli production of Kafka's The Trial called "Citizen K." directed by Yael Cramsky, which premiered in December 2015.
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