[act-ma] 3/21-3/25: "Kafka's The Trial: An 'Extraordinary Rendition": 2d production in the Pilgrim Theatre's Spring Festival at the BCA -- March 21-25

[Mary Curtin]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 
[revised specifically for Kafka's The Trial: "An Extraordinary Rendition"]
March, 2007
Pilgrim Theatre, pilgrim at mit.edu, (413)628-3850
Media Contact for the Pilgrim Theatre:
Mary Curtin, 617-241-9664, 617-470-5867 (cell), marycurtin at comcast.net

Pilgrim Theatre Research and Performance Collaborative
presents 
Kafka's The Trial: "An Extraordinary Rendition"

created and performed by 
Kermit Dunkelberg
directed by Kim Mancuso

March 21 through March 25
Plaza Black Box Theatre at the Boston Center for the Arts

"There can be no doubt that behind all the actions of this court of justice,

that is to say in my case, behind my arrest and today's interrogation, 
there is a great organization at work.and the significance of this great
organization, gentlemen?  
It consists in this, that innocent persons are accused of guilt, 
and senseless proceedings are put into motion against them.." (The Trial,
Franz Kafka).

[second production in the series Crossing Borders III : Voices]



(Boston, MA) Pilgrim Theatre Research and Performance Collaborative presents
Kafka's The Trial: "An Extraordinary Rendition". Second production in the
series Crossing Borders III: Voices. March 21 through March 25; show times:
Wed.-Sat., 8 pm; Sat.-Sun., 2 pm. At the Plaza Black Box Theatre at the
Boston Center for the Arts, 539 Tremont Street, South End, Boston.
Convenient to the Orange and Silver Lines; wheelchair access provided.
Tickets: $18.50-$23, $15.50 for students & seniors; special "Pay What You
Can" on Wed. night (minimum $5) available two hours before curtain at the
Box Office. Special ASL performance on Friday March 23 at 8pm and Saturday
March 24 at 2pm. For advance tickets and information: BostonTheatreScene.com
Box Office at 617-933-8600 or www.BostonTheatreScene.com; other advance
ticket outlets: the Stanford Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for
the Arts, 527 Tremont Street, Boston or at the BU Theatre, 264 Huntington
Ave, Boston.

Pilgrim Theatre's witty and satirical Kafka's The Trial: "An Extraordinary
Rendition" created and performed by Kermit Dunkelberg (as Yusef K.) with
Chris Crowley (as the Silent Usher) is the company's latest project, coming
directly on the heels of the critically acclaimed N (Bonaparte). Welcome to
the 21st century: bureaucracy, alienation, and perpetual, all-consuming
guilt. Then add a dash of smart humor and a slice of cool moves.

The original theatrical exploration based on Franz Kafka's "The Trial"
intends an "extraordinary rendition" of Kafka's tale of domestic
surveillance and undisclosed charges.  After all, someone must have been
telling lies about Yusef K., for without having done anything wrong he was
arrested one fine morning. Guilt and innocence become immaterial when a
bureaucracy has the strength to create not only the laws, but the trials and
the verdicts.  What is the outcome when one is uncertain of one's crime, or
whether one has even committed a crime?  Do we, perforce, lose belief in our
own innocence?

"If you want a serious interrogation, you send a prisoner to Jordan. If you
want them to be tortured, you send them to Syria. If you want someone to
disappear - never to see them again - you send them to Egypt" (former CIA
agent Robert Baer).

Kermit Dunkelberg, a co-founder and Core Actor of Pilgrim Theatre, has
created ground-breaking roles for the company for twenty years.  A student
of Jerzy Grotowski's at Irvine, CA, and a company member of Drugie Studio
Wroclawskie (Second Studio of Wroclaw Poland, under Zbigniew Cynkutis),
Dunkelberg has explored the sonic and physical textures of performance,
pushing the envelope with each new artistic journey. "Dunkelberg is
thrilling."  says Liza Weisstuch of the Boston Phoenix. He's "one of
Boston's most intense actor/writer/directors" (Boston Theatre Mirror)
Driven by Dunkelberg, Pilgrim Theatre's eclectic body of work has always
been immediate, physical and provocative. The Boston Globe has praised
Pilgrim Theatre's "innovation, physical performance, and risk-taking. This
company is trying to push theatre in a new direction."

Inspired by Hungarian composer Gyorgy Kurtag's work Kafka-Fragmente, among
other sources, Pilgrim Theatre's latest confrontation of contemporary
reality smashes the literary up against the theatrical. Walter Benjamin has
claimed that "Kafka's entire literary ouevre is a codex of gestures." It is
this theatricality which Dunkelberg announces in his search for the tension
between the sonic (music/text) and presence (body).

The small, precise performance invites the audience, without judgment, into
a dialogue about our role in today's "teatr real".  We are updated daily in
our newspapers and on laptop screens about the latest movement in the
"theatre" of war. Our information stream implicates all of us as surely as
if we were discovered with weapon in hand.

The third year of Pilgrim Theatre's ambitious and successful series Crossing
Borders brings together an extraordinary array of performative voices in a
theatre festival at Boston Center for the Arts' Plaza Black Box Theatre.
Accordingly, the Festival's title this year is Voices. Each of the four
productions proposes a different and fascinating use of the voice.  A
courageous artist confronts his aphasia (vocal impairment due to stroke) and
creates a performance; another challenges bureaucracy in search of the
meaning buried under what is NOT spoken; cabaret performers traverse
geographic and historical borderlines in song; a calmly intelligent woman
confronts a cockroach and discovers her passionately wild side; the four
productions offer a feast for the theatre-lover. Pilgrim Theatre, a Resident
Theatre at Boston Center for the Arts, has won an NEA Challenge America
award to bring the Deaf and Deaf-Blind communities to the Crossing Borders
III festival this spring. The entire series runs from March 14 through April
7. For more information on Pilgrim Theatre, log onto www.pilgrimtheatre.org.

###



-submitted by marycurtinproductions
c/o Mary Curtin
PO Box 290703, Charlestown, MA 02129
617-241-9664, 617-470-5867 (cell), marycurtin at comcast.net
"dedicated to staging insightful entertainment, particularly in
non-traditional venues"
www.marycurtinproductions.com

 

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://act-ma.org/pipermail/act-ma_act-ma.org/attachments/20070309/5601394d/attachment.html>