LATHSHEV-FITHSHNEV-PROZESS
/Processing A Process/
Gívan Belá and Michal Kindernay
As a follow up to the project "The Last Theatre Show Ever", which radically closed 2 centuries of theatre mis-
evolution in München in September 2009, we decided to take up on a free reinterpretation of Kafka's “The Trial”.
The chosen adaptation of “The Trial” directed by Dušan Pařízek, is currently being performed in Theater/Divadlo
Komedie, Praha. This successful, many award-winning adaptation represents all the qualities of current classical
theater. For us it provides a frm experimentation ground and provides a perfect score for staging The First
Theatre Show Never.
The experiment plays essential parameters that constitute theatre and theatrical action nowadays. It tries to
appreciate it like an audience does, but with additional artifcial organs like microphones, cameras and a
variation of sensors. This new way of analytical perceiving theatre through its time-varying changes on stage
allows us to plot new performance-related parameters. But frst we take all action out, since we are not
interested in virtuosity, drama and sublimation anymore, after the “Last Theatre Show Ever”.
“The First Theatre Show Never” will concentrate on synthesis, cooked from the new perceptual data, fed back in
real time into the de-actor-ivated perception-analysis-synthesis loop.
The ingredients:
1) Through the image we work with the movement, spacial spreading, motion detection, timings for static
moments and velocities.
2) In the sound we analyze mostly speech, perceiving its changes, the occurence of silences, the volume and
spectral complexities.
3) Between both we examine the relations, overlappings and contradictions, the rhythm/cadenz and the non-
recurrent forms.
4) Additionally we capture different types of parameters like electricity and its obsoleteness, the energy of
movement, the density of the energy.
With this we try to create another context and environment in which the traditional theatrical settings are not
represented: maybe we need daylight or an amphitheater again, or maybe we have to move to an abandoned
area (the non-site as a new place).
The resulting "process” will be transformed into an audiovisual composition, which we will presented between
the cafeteria and the entrance (an in-between site) of Divadlo Komedie during and after the real performance of
"The Trial". First the individual interpretation will be based on a study of a previous performance, and
transformed into a new form/setting. Then we will combine this with an approach to the parallel performance out
in the theater.
The audience can expect a full-length composition, identical to the timings of the original performance. During
the theatre play itself they can watch/hear an audiovisual transcription in a new context and aesthetical
treatment. They will for sure be disillusioned in a fundamental way: there will be no action that is overlapping
both interpretations: the actors interpreting kafka's writings, 'the frst theatre show never' interpreting them
(without the action). An essential feature for coming to theatre will be gone. Only time as a structure remains,
made audible and visible.
Kafka and esp. Der Prozess: a representation of a warning against Sovereignity dominating ordinary life up to
the level of obstruction, destruction. In two ways the subjective is being challenged: by the dominance of a
bureaucracy, which is non-ideological, hyper-normative, non-confrontational and objective, and secondly by its
persistence in its life-long non-acquittal status. The challenge becomes here: how to bring out the sensibility
when all action is eliminated. The frst theatre show that never wanted to be one.
Praha March 21, 2010.