Rehearsing the Revolution: Franz Kafka’s Minor Literature and the “Other” Bertolt Brecht in an Original Translation and Anti-Authoritarian Adaptation of Kafka’s “The Trial”

Mentzel, Alex Aaron2020-09-292020-09-292020https://hdl.handle.net/1794/25782145 pagesPolitical theater is an inherently difficult genre to navigate, constrained as it is by conflicting definitions and techniques. Even when done well, it is not always clear how to evaluate the efficacy and impact of a political piece. Additionally, is not all art and creativity in some ways reflective of politics? Nevertheless, theater possesses unique qualities that disturb the public square and that interrogate cultural and political narratives in order to instigate change. This thesis examines authoritarian tendencies of the U.S. political system as it relates to historical changes in immigration law and the criminalization of migrants, using Hannah Arendt’s concept of the “right to have rights” to describe the seemingly endemic violence directed against stateless people. Furthermore, this thesis re-examines the notion of the interruption and the geste—key devices in Bertolt Brecht’s epic theater—as they have been developed by Walter Benjamin, Hans-Thies Lehmann, Freddie Rokem, and Nikolaus Müller-Schöll, in order to suggest a newly aesthetically conceptualized and politically comprehensible contemporary theater. The “minor literature” of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s work on Franz Kafka is the connecting link, as they assert that his world is a world of theater which can only be understood in terms of the interruptive gestus. My intellectual and creative work rests on a non-extractive research and performance attempt to address, and change, the realities of the current U.S. immigration system. I am haunted by the question posed in Gayatri Spivak’s essay Can the Subaltern Speak? This thesis recognizes the ensuing double bind of its own placement in Western academy and theory and explores an application of the subaltern voice to migrant communities. Tying the subaltern/migrant voice together to the work of Arendt, Kafka, and Brecht results in the adaptation of Kafka’s The Trial that concludes this thesis.en-USPolitical TheaterTheater ArtsBertolt BrechtFranz KafkaArendtSpivakPoliticsTheaterRehearsing the Revolution: Franz Kafka’s Minor Literature and the “Other” Bertolt Brecht in an Original Translation and Anti-Authoritarian Adaptation of Kafka’s “The Trial”Thesis/Dissertation