KARACHI: If one’s memory serves right, then the play Kafka — My Life that director Uzma Sabeen staged at the Arts Council over the weekend for the Goethe Institut as part of Austrian-Czech writer Franz Kafka’s centenary events was first produced in 2012 at the National Academy of Performing Arts (Napa). Memory is a strange thing, though; it can also prove one wrong just when one thinks it can’t. In that play, however, there were five characters [Kafka, his father Hermann, his romantic partner Faraida, his friend Max Brod and his mother Julie]. The drama put up on Saturday, too, had the same characters.

Kafka — My Life introduces the audience, as soon as the curtains are drawn, to Max (Fazal Ahmed Chishti). He is seen trying to set a piece of paper to fire. He talks about his friend Kafka (Syed Qasim Shah) and his wish for not letting his writings see the light of day. Kafka makes an appearance in the spotlight followed by his scene with Faraida (Erum Bashir). The happenings shift to the crux of the play: the writer’s relationship with his father, Hermann (Akbar Islam). Hermann is not happy with his son. He first disputes the presence of Kafka’s friend in St Petersburg, Russia, with whom his son communicates through letters and wants to inform about his interest in Faraida. Then Hermann vents his anger about Kafka trying to earn a name for himself as a writer and his (Hermann’s) business getting ruined in the process.

The last main character that appears on stage is that of Julie (Zarqa Naz) who brings out his son’s frustration with the suffocating atmosphere that exists in his office. Amidst all of this, there’s a small screen at the back of the stage on which images of the different phases of the writer’s life run.

Kafka — My Life is an effort that needs to be revisited if it’s to wow the audience with its content and craft. Kafka is, arguably, the most important fiction writer of the 20th century, therefore before embarking on such an ambitious undertaking, all loose ends should be tied. For example, when Faraida and Kafka are in conversation, the piano in the background drowns out their voices. Chishti’s lines were hard to understand because of his low voice projection even when the auditorium had very few people to see the play. Shah tends to fumble quite a bit, which sometimes break the rhythm of fellow actors.

Kafka wrote absurd things, but he wasn’t an absurd man.

Published in Dawn, November 12th, 2024