Kafka’s Monkey Preview Performance

A play based on the short story ‘A Report to an Academy’ by Franz Kafka. Adapted by Colin Teevan. Performed by Isabel Shaida. Directed by Naomi Shafer.
“Esteemed members of the Academy! You have done me the great honour of inviting me to give an account of my former life as an ape.”

Kafka’s Monkey is a one-woman performance that touches on themes of origin, selfhood, and collective responsibility. The protagonist asserts she has evolved from ape to man in five short years in order to escape imprisonment.

While taking place in the world of 1917, the play highlights current questions of body autonomy. How does a person survive under increasingly constrictive conditions? What parts of ourselves do we give up? What does freedom truly mean if one being’s freedom is at the expense of another’s?

Old Lumberyard, 122 N F St, Livingston, MT 59047