Apparatus

Director and dramatist Katharina Schmitt returns to Franz Kafka's text following her 2018 production "Report to an Academy" at Studio Hrdinů. Her new project "Apparatus" explores the phenomenon of spectatorship, the observer's relationship to reality, and their responsibility for their own perspective.

The production is based on Kafka's short story "In the Penal Colony." A researcher arrives at a penal settlement and becomes the first outsider in years to witness an execution. An officer in charge of the execution machine familiarizes him with how executions work and their decline under a new commandant—until the machine jams and the officer decides to release the condemned prisoner, lie down in the machine himself, and ask the researcher for assistance. The judge becomes the condemned, and the seemingly detached perspective of the witness is suddenly burdened with unexpected responsibility.

The adaptation examines several apparatuses simultaneously: the execution machine, the power apparatus of the penal colony, and the apparatus of perspective—the ways in which observation itself intervenes in events.

The production features set design by Pavel Svoboda, composer and sound designer Christoph Wirth, costume designer Patricia Talacko, and dramaturg Ján Šimek. The project is created in international collaboration with JOiN Oper Stuttgart and has been supported by the Czech-German Future Fund and the Culture Moves Europe project financed by the European Union.