Apparat

Franz Kafka’s short story In the Penal Colony is a grotesque parable of a world shaped by violence and torture. In the stage adaptation by Prague’s Studio Hrdinů – one of the Czech Republic’s most renowned theatres – the torture machine becomes an archaeological site of observation, an echo chamber that opens up Kafka’s themes to multiple perspectives: the cruelty of bureaucratic systems, the individual caught in shame and entanglement, the looming shadow of totalitarianism. Where does our urge to witness the suffering of others lead us? And what responsibility comes with being a witness?