Kafka's Voices

Staged reading

Max Simonischek and Wiebke Puls guide us through the multifaceted world of Kafka's language.

Readers who engage more intensively with texts by the Prague-born German-speaking writer Franz Kafka (1883-1924) almost inevitably come across a contradictory phenomenon that is difficult to explain. On the one hand, they become increasingly familiar with Kafka's „sound“ – style, tone of voice, vocabulary – so that they can guess his authorship after just a few sentences, even in lesser-known texts. On the other hand, they become increasingly aware of Kafka's immense linguistic range and ability to modulate. This paradoxical effect is also known from other artistic fields, such as singers.

The staged reading „Kafka's Voices“ is a composition of original text passages that is intended to make this diversity audible to less experienced readers and thus entice them to read further. The reading offers numerous moments of surprise and inner movement, fantastic ideas and abysmal comedy.

Kafka succeeds in the dream narrative as well as the love letter and the official letter, the aphorism and the through-composed short prose, the parable and the slapstick, the theatre-like novel scene, the literary diary and sometimes everything simultaneously and intertwined, without ever giving you the feeling that the author is losing control.

Text composition and introduction: Reiner Stach, Germanist and author of a three-volume biography of Kafka (S. Fischer, 2002-2014).

Max Simonischek studied acting at the Mozarteum in Salzburg. Engagements at the Vienna Burgtheater, the Munich Kammerspiele and the Salzburg Festival, among others. Numerous awards, including the Nestroy Theatre Prize. In 2015, Max Simonischek directed and performed Kafka's The Burrow for the first time at the Neumarkt Theatre in Zurich; his play „Kafka Dies“ premiered at the Innsbruck Theatre in June 2022.

Wiebke Puls studied acting in Berlin. Engagements in Hanover and Hamburg, since 2005 at the Münchner Kammerspiele. Numerous awards, most recently the 3sat Prize.

Admission: 12 € / 7 € (box office)

An event organised in cooperation with Literaturhandlung München. Funded by the Bavarian State Ministry for Family, Labour and Social Affairs.