Lauded Australian director Kosky decries anti-Semitism
Liz Hobday |
Barrie Kosky’s latest show is about Kafka, and the renowned Australian director finds himself in a moment that, while perhaps not technically Kafkaesque, is certainly ironic.
“Being a Jewish artist living in Berlin … Germany is one of the safest places for diaspora Jews to live at the moment,” he told AAP.
“I mean, that could be written by Mel Brooks.”
Kosky’s vaudevillian version of Franz Kafka’s novel The Trial, K has been developed with the celebrated Berliner Ensemble, starring Kathrin Wehlisch as Joseph K.
After rave reviews in Berlin, its first international showing will be as a centrepiece of the Adelaide Festival in 2027, along with Romeo Castellucci’s production of the opera Bluebeard’s Castle.
A former artistic director of the festival, Kosky promises audiences don’t need to have read Kafka to appreciate the show, although it’s full of references for those who have.
The Czech Jewish novelist wrote in German and his stories exemplified 20th century guilt and alienation, the absurdity and horrors of bureaucratic systems and the machinery of state power.
They are also funny, says Kosky, who promises his show is too.
The main character of The Trial is arrested and finds himself trapped in an absurdly complicated legal system, trying desperately to find out what he has done wrong.
Readers of the novel never discover the answer, but in Kosky’s version the trial is an examination of the author’s Judaism, an attribute which is sometimes forgotten in discussion of his work.
Oh, and there’s singing and dancing – including a tap dancing Rabbi.
The production is in German, Hebrew, and Yiddish, with surtitles translated from Kafka’s stories – so for English-speaking audiences that haven’t read Kafka, they will be reading him during the show.
In previous years Kosky has brought operatic productions to Adelaide, and in 2024 The Threepenny Opera, also with the Berliner Ensemble.
AAP spoke to the director just before the final block of public hearings for Australia’s anti-Semitism royal commission, called in response to the terrorist attack at Bondi beach which saw 15 people killed and another 40 wounded.
Melbourne-born Kosky, 59, hasn’t lived in Australia for 26 years, but laments the nation’s public discourse, which he says has morphed from legitimate political criticism into discussion so polarised it has become terrifying and dangerous.
“We have crossed over into ‘should the state of Israel exist?’ which has never happened in any other country … (It) leads us into rampant 21st century anti-Semitism, of a type that we have not seen for decades,” he said.
He’s vehemently opposed to the Israeli government, but cautions that Jewish people from both Israel and the diaspora are being forced to take reductive positions on complex issues, in response to a performative moral outrage from non-Jews.
“You can be a good Jew if you basically disown Israel, disown Zionism, disown Jewish culture, and say absolutely free Palestine,” he said.
K has absolutely nothing to do with anti-Semitism, Gaza, Israel or the Holocaust, said Kosky – it’s fundamentally a show about Jewish spirituality and culture.
Perhaps that’s timely, as he perceives Jewish people again becoming a scapegoat for the world’s evils.
“It’s a perfect storm and I don’t know how we get out of it, because this is the time you want dialogue, compassion, empathy – most of the yelling offers no solutions.”
K is at Her Majesty’s Theatre from March 4-7.
AAP