THE TRIAL

Franz Kafka’s THE TRIAL tells the story of an individual’s hopeless struggle against the anonymous machinery of bureaucracy and legal procedure. A Kafkaesque nightmare whose echoes are impossible to ignore in the environment of the Stadthaus.

Josef K. has no idea what is happening to him. On the morning of his 30th birthday, the bank clerk is arrested by two men he does not know—as if that were not enough. Yet Josef K. has done nothing wrong, at least nothing he is aware of. The charges against him remain a mystery. His attempt to appear in court leads him to a dilapidated and mysterious administrative office in the city center. Josef K. is determined to defend himself. After all, the principle of in dubio pro reo applies. But the more forcefully he asserts his innocence, the more opaque, confusing, and seemingly endless the web of laws, paragraphs, and regulations becomes. In this case, the rule of law cannot be relied upon. When critical questions are asked, the microphone is switched off. The press is reprimanded. Scandals come to light. Amid all this, there is growing confusion about how the trial is actually supposed to proceed. Josef K. realises that the »purpose of this vast organisation, this corrupt gang«—the purpose of the increasingly absurd proceedings—is ultimately nothing but meaninglessness. In THE TRIAL, Kafka amplifies the lack of transparency in legal proceedings and the obstacles and dead ends of bureaucratic machinery into a nightmarish scenario. 

Felix Krakau, born in Hamburg in 1990, studied theater directing at the University of Music and Performing Arts Frankfurt and, as a visiting student, playwriting at the Berlin University of the Arts. He works as a director and playwright at venues including Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus, Volkstheater Wien, Theater Bremen, Schauspielhaus Wien, Schauspiel Essen, Staatsschauspiel Dresden, Theater Heidelberg, and the state theaters of Augsburg and Darmstadt. He has received numerous awards for his work, including the Körber Studio Young Directors’ Prize, the 3rd Else-Lasker-Schüler Playwriting Prize, and residency fellowships from the Roger Willemsen Foundation, the Hessian Literary Council, and Künstlerhaus Lukas Ahrenshoop. In the 2025–26 season, he directed DON KARLOS (A NEW MORNING) at Theater Bonn. Krakau is known for his intelligent, contemporary, and humorous reinterpretation of classical material. In his stage adaptation of THE TRIAL, he explores the bizarre depths of the bureaucratic apparatus. How beautifully the Stadthaus shines in the sun…