With a cast of 11 students, “The Trial” has been in rehearsal for just over 8 weeks. The production sees students from both Burgess Hill School for Girls and Worth School uniting to put on one of Steven Berkoff’s most famous adaptations. The story, originally by Kafka, is of Joseph K, a bank clerk who is suddenly arrested one morning. K is a man who has just reached his thirtieth birthday, who is financially secure, and holding down a regular job. “The Trial” follows K's battle against the sinister and bureaucratic legal system as he tries to uncover his crime - of what is he arrested. K is transported from his mundane routine into the dark wrangling of the law, into a world of eccentric and absurd characters.
Berkoff's adaptation unleashes the physical reality of Kafka's imagination onto the stage. K's trial becomes a personal quest for answers but also a very public trial. The 11 strong cast play over 25 characters as well as the chorus which represents K’s conscience and observes his journey as we the audience do. The parable of the door becomes the physical trial, represented by the doorframes on the stage. Berkoff makes the actor the set, the storyteller and the narrator. His physical style of theatre embodies the art of the imagination.
“The cast have worked exceptionally hard over a short space of time to put the production together. It is a genre that I’ve not tackled before but have always wanted to, and it’s been great to watch everything coming to life as the process has gone on,” said Emma Tarratt, Director of the production. “There are some brilliant moments, many that are hysterically funny and there has been a lot of laughter in rehearsals!”
The production is on over 3 nights at Burgess Hill School for Girls from 14th – 16th March.
16/03/07
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| The Trial |
