Choreographer Arthur Pita: Kafka and Me

Unique among the theatrical adaptations is choreographer Arthur Pita’s The Metamorphosis, described by the Financial Times as ‘dance genius.’ It premiered in 2011 at the ROH Linbury Theatre, and went on to win a Critics Circle Award for Pita and an Oliver for dancer Edward Watson in the role of Gregor Samsa, the man who wakes up transformed into a beetle.

So, when the Oxford Cultural Programme decided to hold a special commemoration to mark the centenary, the organisers thought a revival of The Metamorphosis would be the perfect complement to an extensive Kafka exhibition and a collective public reading of The Metamorphosis.

For various reasons that was not to be. Instead, the team that created The Metamorphosis reunited, with a very special addition, to tackle another Kafka work: his last, the short story The Hunger Artist.

To find out more, I met Arthur Pita and Edward Watson, now retired from The Royal Ballet, at the Royal Opera House where they are rehearsing – The Royal Ballet is one of the sponsors of the production, alongside the Oxford Kafka Research Centre and the Cultural Programme.

Arthur Pita rehearses Edward Watson in The Hunger Artist. Photo: Rick Giuest
Arthur Pita, whose extensive portfolio includes nightmarish pieces such as The Mother and Stepmother/Stepfather, alongside the sad but ultimately uplifting The Little Match Girl, has a special feel for the absurd and the sinister, so I wasn’t surprised when he told me,

‘When we finished The Metamorphosis I thought, it would be lovely to do another Kafka, and I always had my eye on it. The stories are so obscure and absurd, they have so much potential for different meanings that you can stick to the main road, but you can find the side roads, you can find all these different possibilities.’

The Hunger Artist tells the story of a man whose art consists of fasting publicly for periods of 40 days while held in a cage, aided and abetted by an impresario, who simultaneously promotes him and stops him fasting beyond what is considered a safe period

Edward Watson created an inimitable character as the man-beetle Gregor Samsa in The Metamorphosis; how does that role compare with that of the hunger artist?

‘There’s the captive aspect of their being very similarly trapped. When you’re physically in a cage that’s something somebody has decided to do to themselves; trapped within a family dynamic, within a work/life trap [like Gregor Samsa], that is another thing, but there’s a certain oppression to both of those things.’

There is, however, a crucial difference, Watson adds, in that the hunger artist chooses his own trap.

’It’s like a need, a hunger to deliver your art. I think that’s the difference between the victim and the non-victim.’

Another veteran of The Metamorphosis is the composer Frank Moon; and cabaret glamour, a hint of danger and a touch of Weimar decadence come with the addition of chanteuse extraordinaire Meow Meow, who takes on the role of the impresario.

Arthur Pita is thrilled to be working with Meow Meow:

‘There’s a power in her, it brings a sexual charge to the piece, which is good, especially as there are all sorts of things going on, there’s a person in a cage, Kafka had a very complicated sexual life, something we’re incorporating, what his relationship to sex was.

‘This was his last story, he edited the final manuscript on his deathbed. So he’s writing this as he's dying, which is completely fascinating. Whenever there’s death there’s always sex.’

Edward Watson and Meow in rehearsal for The Hunger Artist. Photo: Rick Guest

Costumes are by Charlotte MacMillan, the designer daughter of choreographer Sir Kenneth and painter Deborah MacMillan - ‘ballet royalty’, her good friend Edward Watson stresses.

All powerful creatives in their own right, then. So, I asked Arthur Pita, is The Hunger Artist a collaborative effort?

‘Very much so. Frank Moon is the composer, Meow Meow is writing lyrics with Frank Moon and in the text I’m working with Meow Meow and Frank together, guiding them - I’m not a writer, so they’re really doing the poetry. I always think you should use all the brains in the room. It’s not a rule, but I have a way that I like to work, to say, if you really feel that you want to try something, you should try it because sometimes you might think, oh this is a terrible idea, but then you try it and it works. If it doesn’t work you can just throw it away, but at least you tried it.’

Watson agrees:

‘Yeah, it’s how I like to work: be brave enough to try a thing, and be brave enough to be in a room with people who will tell you if it doesn’t work.’

I tried – and failed – to visualise how this show would actually work, what it would look like, what kind of atmosphere it would create. Arthur Pita enlightened me:

'It’s going to be immersive, so that the audience who are coming to watch it won’t be sitting, they will come to see it as they would have come to see the hunger artist historically, so it will be a standing audience. The cage will be 1.5 m high, and you’ll see the hunger artist inhabit the cage for his fast. Meow Meow will be guiding us through that process. We know normally he’d fast for 40 days, it’s very biblical, there’s always these touches of religion - possibly, possibly not ... so, I feel the experience is something absurd, questionable but meaningful.’

And so we come to the question that perhaps should not be asked, but I do ask it, anyway. What does it all mean?

‘We spent three days working with these academics in Oxford studying the text, which was incredible, I loved it’ Arthur Pita says. ‘When you talk to them they will say, with Kafka it’s never one thing.’

Edward Watson: ‘If you have a question and ask them, is it this? Or is it this? You know the answer is going to be, Yes!’

Arthur Pita goes on: ‘With Kafka, the moment you become specific, you start to be on the nose. For example, with the hunger artist, is he Christ or is he the Antichrist? He’s both. Is he a starving artist literally, or is he starving for an audience?’

Arthur Pita’s The Hunger Artist will premiere on 3rd June, the very date of Kafka’s death, so, he says,

’It feels great to bring his last work to life. The way to keep Kafka alive is to reinvent, to have a viewpoint. It’s nerve wracking, but it’s also very exciting.’

The Hunger Artist is at The Old Fire Station in Oxford on 3, 4 and 5 June.Tickets £5 -20.