{"id":329,"date":"2024-11-13T17:03:52","date_gmt":"2024-11-13T17:03:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/30\/?p=329"},"modified":"2026-05-21T18:37:53","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T18:37:53","slug":"%ce%b1-report-to-an-academy-a-postcolonial-and-ecocritical-performance-by-zero-point-theatre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/30\/%ce%b1-report-to-an-academy-a-postcolonial-and-ecocritical-performance-by-zero-point-theatre\/","title":{"rendered":"\u0391 Report to an Academy<\/em>.\u00a0A Postcolonial and Ecocritical Performance by Zero Point Theatre"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Penelope Chatzidimitriou<\/strong>*<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Abstract<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Despite Kafka’s deep affection for theatre, his writings are fundamentally antitheatrical. This antitheatricality presents a unique challenge, pushing directors to examine the function of the text within a performance, as well as the practices of acting and directing. With this proposition in mind, made by Martin Puchner (\u201cKafka\u2019s Antitheatrical Gestures,\u201d 2010), the present article focuses on the theatre production A Report to an Academy<\/font>, directed by Savvas Stroumpos (Athens, 2021). It will be argued that the Greek director and his group Zero Point Theatre, both well versed in the acting method of Theodoros Terzopoulos, used Kafka\u2019s text to foreground the human body as animality and the performing body in a constant state of becoming-animal. Such an “aesthetics of aliveness” on the stage is politically sharp and especially in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic reaffirmed theatre as biological and social necessity. Alongside, the production revealed a postcolonial and ecocritical Kafka, and A Report to an Academy<\/font> as a collective slave narrative, which brings to light the (post)colonial and ecological hubris of Western civilization.

Keywords:<\/strong> slave narrative, ecocriticism, postcolonialism, Black Lives Matter, trauma, becoming-other<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Small totem-like face sculptures make up the minimal setting of the performance of Kafka\u2019s \u0391 Report to an Academy<\/em> as directed by Savvas Stroumpos in 2021, in Athens. Their blackness immediately reveals the ideological lens of his directorial approach: The monologue is treated as an aesthetic example of Kafka\u2019s lasting interest in European colonialism, and more specifically African enslavement, the \u201cgenocidal depredations in Africa and the New World\u201d (Frydman 1), which preceded the Holocaust. In the performance, the genealogical connections between Caribbean slavery and the Holocaust are first of all visually set on stage (designed by Spyros Betsis), shaking off any dehistoricized reading of Kafka\u2019s text. This Kafka is not only a prophet of the Holocaust but also sensitive to the exploitation of black lives. Stroumpos directed A Report to an Academy<\/em> in the aftermath of the African-American George Floyd\u2019s murder by a white policeman in Minneapolis, in May 25, 2020; an event that sparked widespread international outrage, leading to public demonstrations against police violence and institutional racism, as well as demands for increased police accountability, particularly through the Black Lives Matter movement advocating for racial equality.<\/p>\n\n\n

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In A Report to an Academy<\/em>, Kafka\u2019s monologue is staged as a collective, slave narrative. Performer at the centre: Ellie Iggliz. Photo: Antonia Canta<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
Black Faces, Red Wounds<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

The performance interprets Kafka\u2019s 1917 monologue as a slave narrative, focusing on the experiences of Red Peter, a “Menschenaffe” (man-ape). This narrative explores both the physical and psychological brutality that Red Peter endures after being taken from his homeland, the \u201cslave-rich Gold Coast\u201d (Thompson 94) in West Africa, now known as Ghana. Red Peter becomes a prisoner of the infamous German wildlife trader Karl Hagenbeck, who, in the late nineteenth century, supplied European zoos with wild animals and indigenous people. These individuals, often described as “primitive,” included Sami, Inuit and Nubians. Such \u201cexotic\u201d exhibits satisfied the curiosity of \u201ccivilized\u201d European visitors and fed the imperialist narrative of European \u201csuperiority.\u201d Disfigured and deprived of his original identity and virility, Red Peter is transported to Hamburg by Hagenbeck\u2019s slaver and ultimately becomes \u201ca variety ape with human attributes dragged out into the spotlight at world\u2019s fairs and brought on Hagenbeck\u2019s zoo stages to amaze crowds\u201d (Thompson 94).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More specifically, the monologue follows the narrative arc from slavery to freedom. This move consists of the four chronological stages of a typical slave narrative, from loss of innocence and realization of the present condition of bondage, consideration of alternatives to oppression and the resolution to be free, as, after all, such narratives are testimonies of free men (Foster 85). Still, in Red Peter\u2019s monologue, there is no real freedom attained, just a way out from his bondage, as he explains to the members of the Academy: \u201cNo, freedom was not what I wanted. Only a way out; right or left or in any direction; I made no other demand. . .\u201d (Kafka 253\u201354).<\/p>\n\n\n

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Captive. The Report<\/em> as a narrative of the open wound. Performer at the centre: Anna Marka-Bonissel. Photo: Antonia Canta<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Without real freedom, however, there is no \u201csolution, or a cure\u201d at the end of this slave narrative; thus, no final emotional and mental catharsis. The Report<\/em> turns into a narrative of the open wound which remains as visible as the large, hairless red scar on Red Peter\u2019s cheek (which earned him his name), or the one on his genitalia, both unerasable marks caused by the hunters\u2019 shots in the native jungle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With Red Peter being \u201c[emasculated] beyond repair, the story thematizes its [\/his] wound, or its [\/his] existence as eternal wound\u201d (Thompson 101\u201302). Likewise, the structure of Kafka\u2019s monologue \u201cremains an open wound\u201d (Menninghaus qtd. in Thompson 101\u201302) as Red Peter opts for the best possible way out: becoming an entertainer in the music hall industry instead of a caged animal in the Hagenbeck Zoological Garden.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Entertainer. Red Peter (performed in this scene by Dinos Papageorgiou) as a variety ape-man addresses the audience. At the background, the rest of the entertaining chorus (performers: Babis Alefantis, Evelyn Assouad, Giannis Giaramazidis, Ellie Iggliz, Anna Marka-Bonissel, Rozy Monaki). Photo: Antonia Canta<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
Bleeding Text, Red Textile<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Similarly, Stroumpos describes his performance of A Report to an<\/em> Academy<\/em> as \u201ca musical theatre of the wound [or trauma].\u201d[1]<\/sup><\/a> Like the setting with its colonial resonance, the red colour of the costumes (designed by the actress Rosy Monaki and the director) recalls the bleeding open wounds on the body of this Menschenaffe<\/em> (man-ape), before they became red scars. As Red Peter comments in his ironic report: \u201cOf course what I felt then as an ape I can represent now only in human terms, and therefore I misrepresent it, but although I cannot reach back to the truth of the old ape life, there is no doubt that it lies somewhere in the direction I have indicated\u201d (Kafka 253).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is the open wound of the text, alien words bleeding from the physical and psychological injury to a body that is a subject, an object but also a colonial project \u201cto be worked on\u201d (Lowton and Higgs 2). The scars on his hairy, black body are marks of a violent Western culture and a racist social structure that commodified his enslaved body and turned it into an exotic(ized) spectacle in the music halls of Europe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The costumes\u2019 redness in the performance manifests that a violent penetration took place before skin healing. As Red Peter confesses: \u201cThe second shot hit me below the hip. It was a severe wound. It is the cause of my limping a little to this day\u201d (Kafka 253). Scars like these have both a personal and a socio-political significance that is expressed through a story told by a disfigured body in an alien language. In the performance, such a text of the red, open wound became red textile.<\/p>\n\n\n

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The red dress is a visual signifier of Red Peter\u2019s trauma. Performer: Rozy Monaki. Photo: Antonia Canta<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
A Chorus of Red Peters<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

The text implies that Red Peter is not the only one facing such a fate. He refers to the Zoological Gardens, mentioning animals in barred cages (Kafka 258), and describes his female companion, a \u201chalf-trained little chimpanzee,\u201d who has \u201cthe insane look of the bewildered half-broken animal in her eye\u201d (259). He also mentions another male ape of the same name, \u201cwho died not so long ago and had some local reputation\u201d (251). In response, Stroumpos created a mixed-gender chorus for the performance (cast: Babis Alefantis, Evelyn Assouad, Giannis Giaramazidis, Ellie Iggliz, Anna Marka-Bonissel, Rozy Monaki, Dinos Papageorgiou).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unlike other recent stage renderings of Kafka\u2019s Report<\/em>, which treat this monologue as an individual slave testimony,[2]<\/sup><\/a> Stroumpos broadens the perspective of the narrative and its impact. He prefers a multivocal, multi-bodied rendering, turning Red Peter into a collective entity, a choral \u201cI.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

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The chorus of becoming-apes. Performers: Babis Alefantis, Evelyn Assouad, Giannis Giaramazidis, Ellie Iggliz, Anna Marka-Bonissel, Rozy Monaki, Dinos Papageorgiou. Photo: Antonia Canta<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

This serves, first of all, the needs of his more or less stable group of performers in Zero Point Theatre, who, above all, explore the psychophysical craft of acting (an issue I will soon return to in more detail), but also his interpretation of the monologue as a collective slave narrative, a text of the collective wound (trauma). As it is often the case in ancient Greek tragedy, a genre in which Stroumpos is well-versed thanks to his long-lasting apprenticeship and collaboration with the renowned Greek director Theodoros Terzopoulos and Attis Theatre, this chorus of Red Peters becomes the collective consciousness of the marginalized and the oppressed. In this performance, Kafka\u2019s text becomes a sort of testimonial theatre that dramatizes a collective story of colonial captivity, enslavement, violence, oppression and survival.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Thanks to this mixed-gender chorus, the story becomes a collective narrative of slavery. Performers: Babis Alefantis, Evelyn Assouad, Giannis Giaramazidis, Ellie Iggliz, Anna Marka-Bonissel, Rozy Monaki, Dinos Papageorgiou. Photo: Antonia Canta<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

In contrast to prominent figures in twentieth-century Western theatre, such as Peter Brook\u2014who was the first Western director to travel to Africa in 1972\u201373 (see Ruffini)\u2014Stroumpos does not incorporate African actors or those from the African diaspora into his work. He also does not draw upon the rich and diverse traditions of African theatre and performance (see Igweonu). Such artistic choices would have been unfeasible, even had he desired them (which he did not), due to the COVID-19 restrictions that were in place in Greece and elsewhere during the rehearsal period for A Report to an Academy<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Training. Adopting a non-realistic acting style, performers explored their animal energy. Performers: Rozy Monaki (centre), Evelyn Assouad, Ellie Iggliz (back). Photo: Antonia Canta<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Stroumpos, thus, wisely avoided the psychophysical exploration of the fallible concept of unicultural \u201cAfricanness,\u201d which falsely sees the \u201csingle and very large continent\u201d of Africa <\/em>as a \u201ccoherent and monolithic entity or system\u201d instead of the \u201ccomplex, polysystemic amalgam of many political, linguistic, social, cultural and economic sub-systems\u201d that it actually is (Igweonu 11). In consequence, from the start, he disentangles himself from risky, binary opposites which roughly try to contrast the African theatre from that of Europe, like, for example, \u201ctheatre as religious ritual as opposed to theatre as art, theatre as social ritual as opposed to theatre as entertainment, orality versus literacy, text versus performance, etc.\u201d (Igweonu 13).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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