Punishment

A play based on the works of “The Trial” by Franz Kafka and “The Committee” by Sonallah Ibrahim

guilt is a punishable crime
truth is a punishable crime

K., in his thirties, is arrested without ever learning the reason for his arrest and brought to Trial.
Ch., in his forties, is presented in front of a Committee that will judge whether or not he can continue his life.
K. and Ch. Are citizens only temporarily free, guilty and deserving Punishment.

Direction: Angeliki Sigourou
Performed by:
First Presentation (January – February 2017):
Christos Kolias, Angeliki Angeletaki, Afentia Kanellopoulou, Sonia Karayiannidou, Renata Kosma, Xeni Kottaki, Mary Mavri, Loukia Batsi, Marianna Stathaki, Ariadni Psychogiopoulou
Second Presentation (July 2017):
Christos Kolias, Angeliki Angeletaki, Afentia Kanellopoulou, Sonia Karayiannidou, Xeni Kottaki, Loukia Batsi, Marianna Stathaki
Translation:
The Trial – Franz Kafka: Giota Lagoudakou (Minos Publishing, 2015).
The Committee – Sonallah Ibrahim: For the realization of the play, the work was translated from French by Sonia Karagiannidou and extracts from the Arabic translation by Eleni Kapetanaki and Angeliki Sigourou were also used.
Editing – Adaption of text: All group members
Music:
John Surman: Nestor’s Saga
Fairuz: Saaltak habibi
Maryam Saleh: Ana mesh baghanny
Aphrodite’s child + Irene Pappa: Infinity
Manos Hadjidakis: The Dragon
Set: Eleanna Kotsikou
Poster and booklet design: Vivi Sklia
Photographers: Kirana Gkioka, Eleanna Kotsikou
Βίντεο: Dimitris Tampakis            

Joseph K., head of a bank, on the day of his 39th birthday is arrested without reason and is led to Trial.
Ch., former political prisoner, in his forties, is presented in front of a Committee composed by citizens and military with unofficial power, which will decide whether he can continue his life.  
K. is faced with a united society on the Court Service and strives in vain to discover how one defends himself before a power that remains impersonal and inaccessible; before a class that remains unspoken.
Ch. undertakes a research for the Committee, in order to determine whether or not he will get a second chance in life.
K. is in a world where women pull all strings, a world consisting solely of Law institutions and defendants.
Ch., completing his research brings to light the hidden aspects of the life of «Doctor», a powerful hegemonic form who belongs to plutocracy, involved with the rise of multinational corporations and globalization, while playing an unspecified but significant role in politic power of Egypt. And then the Committee decides to intervene by setting Ch. under massive surveillance and removing any right to privacy and freedom, in order to persuade him to abandon his research.
K. realizes that nobody escapes the clutches of the Law, since the Law is ultimately impersonal as God himself and its Gate can be crossed by no one.
Ch. realizes that his thirst for knowledge and truth is what will ultimately determine his fate, in a merciless way, in the same manner.
K. is punished with the maximum penalty, death.
Ch. is punished with the maximum penalty, subsistence.
Both accept their punishment unquestionably.
They both understand that guilt is an act that is read and punished before it becomes reality, without even an act.

The Trial was first issued in 1925, one year after the death of the Czech writer Franz Kafka, by his friend and biographer, Max Brod, who had however been instructed by the author to burn all the manuscripts he left in his will. The trial is one of the unfinished works of Kafka.
The Committee is issued for the first time in 1981. The author, Sonallah Ibrahim, born in 1937 in Cairo, leftist and nationalist, was imprisoned under Nasser’s regime because of his political beliefs. Sonallah Ibrahim was named “Kafka of Egypt.”
The two plays, The Trial and The Committee, with a difference of almost sixty years, meet in various ways. Both writers took law studies and are perfectly aware of the Law for which they write. They both converse with the unreasonable, placing their characters in a suffocating and nightmarish atmosphere of corruption and bureaucracy, wherein the power is exerted by way of conspiracy, their determined destinies making them completely unable to resist its will.

First Presentation: January and February 2017: Akropoditi Dance and Performing Arts Centre
July 2017: Akropoditi DanceFest 2017 – Akropoditi Dance and Performing Arts Centre