The Apparatus

From one of Perth’s leading devisor-performers, Humphrey Bower, and the creative team behind last year’s award-winning ‘Hiro’, comes the world premiere of The Apparatus; a surreal black comedy adapted from the works of Frank Kafka.

This visceral new production created from three stories by the master of the macabre Frank Kafka, explores the twists and turns of legal and bureaucratic absurdity, safety and security, anxiety and paranoia, and absurd and cruel forms of punishment and oppression; all linked by the concept of the apparatus.

‘Before the Law’ is a hunting parable about a man waiting outside a door; ‘The Burrow’ is a black comedy about a creature obsessed with holes and tunnels; and ‘In the Penal Colony’ is a perverse demonstration by an insane officer of a torture device on an island prison.

Although Kafka’s stories were written a hundred years ago, they have never been more timely than they are today. Originally, they were variously interpreted as neurotic nightmares, surrealist fantasies, existential allegories, theological parables or critiques of administrative bureaucracy, but today; they now seem more like prophetic visions of our current obsession with national security.