Franz Kafka Essay

Franz Kafka was born in Prague on July 3rd 1883, a German-speaking Jew. His father was a large, authoritarian man named Hermann. A dissever of his work reflected his hatred for his father, in the play Metamorphosis and in like manner in Letter to His Father, which reflects his feelings of inferiority and paternal rejection. His work was not of one circumstantial genre. His work was of fantasies, dreams and human suffering. It was eclectic. Dying of Tuberculosis after the First world War, he wanted his work to be burnt upon his death, but his friend, muck Brod realised their potential and published them contrary to his wishes.His three most storied pieces of work were The Trial, The Castle and Amerika. Kafkas three sisters all perished in German concentration camps. The themes of Kafkas work are the loneliness, frustration, and oppressive guilt of an various(prenominal) threatened by anonymous forces beyond his comprehension or control. In literary technique, his work has the qualities both of expressionism and of surrealism. Kafkas lucid style, blending ingenuousness with fantasy and tinged with ironic humour, contributes to the nightmarish, claustrophobic effect of his work.Like in his known long short story Metamorphosis where Gregor Samsa, a hardworking insurance policy agent, awakens to find that he has turned into an enormous insect. Rejected by his family, he is left to die alone. Simulating the situation in his own home, it containms that Kafka based Gregor well-nigh himself. Mr. Samsa also seems to be represented as Hermann Kafka, Franzs own dominating father. Kafka was heavily influenced by religion.As a Jew in his time, there were extensive effects of anti-Semitism on their race, although Hitlers rule all over Germany and his terror-regime over the Jewish at the time was later on in the 1930s, Kafka plausibly would have faced racist remarks and cruelty towards him and his work. As the son of an assimilated Jew who held completely perfu nctorily to the religious practices and well-disposed formalities of the Jewish community, Kafka was German both in language and culture. The absurdity of this social and cultural position created an evasive reality for Kafka, often more hallucinatory than realistic.Steven Berkoff was born into a family of Russian Jewish immigrants, and was born in the East End of London on the 3rd August 1937. During World War 2, in 1942 he was evacuated to Luton to evacuate bombing. When he was 14 years old his family moved to the USA. This gave him the vision to see where he wanted to go and what he wanted to do in life. Moving back to Britain, he finished school, saved up plenteous money and went to France at the age of 19 to study the art of mime. Upon return to London in 1968 he formed the London field of battle grouping.It was in 1969 that Berkoff remade Kafkas Metamorphosis. In 1976 he married his second (and present) wife, Shelley Lee. With the London bailiwick Group, Berkoff attemp ted to create something unique. The London Theatre Group prided itself with trying to care all forms of theatre. They wanted to be everything. They called their work a fusion of elements. Their primary(prenominal) aim was to shock the audition. There were no set rules to Berkoffs theatre. It was a mixture of many kinds of theatre, influenced by many people.The London Theatre Group wanted people of all social backgrounds to come and see their plays. some other thing they tried to do was to move away from conventional theatre, and riding habit different ways of using the stage and positioning the audience. In The punishable Colony, The Trial and Metamorphosis were three plays of Kafkas that Berkoff remade. Other plays the London Theatre Group has performed include Macbeth, Miss Julie versus Expressionism, Agamemnon, The Fall of the House of Usher, East, Greek, Hamlet, Decadence, West, Lunch, Actor, Harrys Christmas, Kvetch, Sink the Belgrano, Salome, Acapulco, Brighton Beach Scum bags, Dog, Storm und Drang, Dahling you were Marvellous, Massage, Shakespeares Villains, The Messiah.The Bow of Ulysses, Ritual in Blood and The Secret Love Life of Ophelia amongst many others. He also starred in many movies such as A Clockwork orangeness and Rambo. He usually played the villain, but the main reason for his strike roles was to fund his theatre productions. Berkoff was an atheist, explaining his wish to attract people of all social masses to see his plays. He never uses religious effects in his plays to avoid any conflict of cultures.Brecht was an influence of Berkoff. Brecht didnt want to draw off involved with an audience. Another influence was Peter Brook, an expert of slapstick. Stanislavski believed in naturalism, the adversary of Brecht, and yet Berkoff used elements from both Brecht and Stanislavski in his work. This is shown in Metamorphosis, as without the audiences sympathies for Gregor, the play would not work. Antonin Artauds was another influence. He was involved in theatre of the absurd. Again, Berkoff uses these ideas, mainly to shock the audience in his productions.