was los josef k.?:/

A consciousness that creates a literary play in order to avoid confronting its own biography.

Person X experiences a panic attack. To avoid confronting the repressed traumatic memory, the consciousness takes refuge behind an intellectual shield. Two levels of consciousness struggle within the mind: X identifies with a character from a Kafka novel and, as Josef K., suddenly finds themselves on trial one day – a trial to which they have increasingly succumbed, without knowing what the charge actually is.

The bigger question, however, is what this trial is meant to distract from, for lurking in Person X’s mind are memories that break down the boundary between the present and the past. This description addresses the symptoms and mechanisms of a traumatised person, in particular fictionalisation as a psychological defence mechanism: the flight of consciousness from an unbearable, somatic trauma into an intellectualised fictional narrative.

How do old shame and guilt affect the present? Is it even good or helpful to remember and come to terms with them, or is it better to live within a story, in the here and now, and let the past be the past? How are repressed and shameful memories anchored in our minds; when do they surface; and when do we drift away mentally and emotionally in certain situations? The evening explores the question of how people use art, literature and intellectualisation to protect themselves from pain, shame and real-life trauma. At the same time, the production examines how abuse, homophobia and repressed feelings of guilt shape the lives of queer people, and how the past shapes our perception of our own present.

The play deconstructs and weaves together the novel with specialist texts on the neurobiology of trauma, excerpts from *Hirn* by Rainald Goetz, and personal biographical elements to create a black comedy.

• Director: Ruslán Viktorov
• Dramaturgy: Jule Martenson
• Set design: Hannah Schütz
• Costumes: Anastasia Malysheva
• Music: Richard Wolf
• Video design: Lidia Sinelnik
• Assistant Director: Carla Stein
• Cast: Noah Tinwa, Philipp Lehfeldt, Julius Gruner, Sarah Palarczyk, Dennis Svensson, Amira Pollmann