BWW Interviews: Susan Galbraith Talks Upcoming Unique Production Of KAFKA'S METAMORPHOSIS

One of the great things about the DC theatre scene is that there is always at least one smaller company doing a production at any given moment that is likely to make the ever expanding community take notice - whether for its uniqueness, the challenges and risks involved, or some other factor.

This month, there's at least one of those productions on my radar. The Alliance for New Music-Theatre, in partnership with the Embassy of the Czech Republic, is presenting a "highly collaborative" production of Kafka's Metamorphosis. Director Susan Galbraith has further adapted Steven Berkoff's dramatic adaptation of the well-known story as music-theatre, involving a host of actors, designers etc. to bring to us a "dark and comical interpretation" through the lens of the Alliance's season theme "The Outsider's Outsider."

In advance of the production coming our way this Wednesday, September 10 and running through the 21st at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company's Rehearsal Hall (641 D Street, NW in Washington, DC), Ms. Galbraith was kind enough to answer some questions from BroadwayWorld.Com. We discussed her company (it's past, present, and possible future), how the production came about, what went into creating it, and what audiences might expect. Here's the result of our conversation:

How did the Alliance for New Music-Theatre come about and what do you consider its niche space in the increasingly crowded DC theatre market of smaller companies? What makes it so unique?

Alliance for New Music-Theatre began as an intensive workshop underwritten by the National Endowment for the Arts in 1994 to bring together a cadre of professional composers, librettists, and performers and explore new directions and the permeable boundaries between music-theatre forms (from opera and the American musical to performance art and mixed-media experimentation.) For several years, the group served more as an informal support group for creative experimentation and a forum for engaging in conversations about the spectrum and process of making music-theatre and did not produce.

In the last few years, it became increasingly clear that we needed to produce work and that there were new collaborations, particularly of a cross-cultural, cross-disciplinary nature, that gave our company what you call a niche. Several eminent local professionals have professed they want opportunities to collaborate in new and sometimes risky directions to keep growing, and I believe audiences can grow more critically appreciative as they grow "new ears" listening to works that keep pushing the envelope, challenging the answers to the question "What is music-theatre?"

How did your partnership with the Embassy of the Czech Republic come about to make this production of Kafka's Metamorphosis happen?

It was at the Czech Embassy's invitation that our company began to develop a relationship with not only persons at the Embassy but, through their programs with several Czech artists, including director-performer Mi?enka ?echová and film maker Petr Jan?árek. We are excited about other collaborations we might do in the future with these artists.

...[In the case of this production] the invitation [from the Embassy] came first. We had presented a work for Mutual Inspirations Festival 2013 sponsored by the Czech Embassy, whose last year's focus was to celebrate playwright, dissident, philosopher and first President of the Czech Republic, Václav Havel. The Václav Havel Project was not only performed as part of the festival, but received a special invitation by His Excellency the Czech Ambassador Petr Gandalovic to perform at his residence, then went on to an acclaimed second run in DC and performances at the Prague Fringe Festival. Based on its success, the Alliance was invited to produce another work for this year's Mutual Inspiration Festival that would focus on Franz Kafka.

Given your mission/niche area and this year's season theme of "The Outsider's Outsider," what was it that attracted you to the idea of presenting an adaptation of Kafka's Metamorphosis? How did that well-known story lend itself to your theme?

[When the invitation from the Embassy came about] I had already been in negotiation with writer Larry Ortiz to develop a chamber "opera" about the Samaritan program, about a volunteer who drops water into the desert and has an unplanned encounter with an illegal coming across our southern border. The two works, while culturally and musically offering very different "worlds" yet they have a common theme in "the outsider's outsider."

Kafka came from a German-speaking family who lived in Czech-speaking Prague. This made his whole family "outsiders." Even though he did not fight in World War I and would not live to see the next war and the Holocaust, there is something prescient about his writing that seems to cast a giant shadow of that horror backwards in time. Moreover, the brilliance of his mind and his - what some would call - excessive artistic sensitivity also set him apart.

I have always been drawn to theater adaptation from literature. Also, I had seen the opening night of Steven Berkoff's adaptation on Broadway when the dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov performed the lead role. I was spellbound and quite moved by the performance. (Sadly, my enthusiasm for the work was unshared by certain New York critics.)

What challenges and unexpected rewards did you encounter in further adapting Steven Berkoff's adaptation - and more fundamentally Kafka's original story - as piece of "music-theatre" and what makes this adaptation so unique?

I love the challenge of bringing to the stage this iconic story - finding a theatrical reality for its main metaphor of transformation. To deal with Kafka by putting someone in a big costume is a perilous choice, and I felt duly warned. I wanted to find a musical language that would enable audiences to experience not just the cultural and religious background of Kafka but to find a contemporary sound to the interior world of Gregor, who tries unsuccessfully to communicate his bewilderment, terror and angst at his own transformation.

I had made a decision early on that we would experiment with animation to create phantasmagoric objects and characters that real actors - that is their characters - would have to interact with. Now, I am a little techno-phobic so this is a huge challenge. But I had discovered the wonderful stick drawings of Kafka and they seemed to offer a model for creating the world and our physical stylization of 3D interacting with 2D. Luckily, I have a wonderful set and projections designer, Joey Wade, and he has brought in animation artist Janet Antich. Together, they are guiding me through this very complex and time-consuming element.

You have a dual-hatted role in this production as director and adaptor. What challenges and opportunities emerged as a result of this level of responsibility? Have you done both before?

In fact, in my life in theatre I have rather enjoyed being a director, or for that matter an actor, in someone else's repertory company or a writer whose work is then lovingly brought into the world by another set of eyes and ears. But some works have seemed to demand that I wear more than one hat to get the vision across. It's perilous, I will admit, and can be exhausting. But in all honesty, it keeps the process close to the original creative impulse. In this case, I felt rather taken over by Kafka. He seemed to invade my dreams and before I knew it, I was being "fed" images and sounds. I felt I had to see it through.

Your production required collaboration from musicians, actors, an animator, and other designers (among probably others) to bring it to fruition. What was the collaborative process like?

We had a script essentially, although I have made what I thought were necessary changes to Berkoff's adaptation. ...[The adaptation] is very British and emphasizes above all else his sensitivity to the British class system. I chose to give my production a new framing device that had to do with establishing Kafka as a character, the writer-artist living amidst his own family. So, the lines between Kafka and his character are blurred. I think that can be easily justified. I [previously] mentioned I also made the decision that I wanted half of the characters in the work to be animated figures - a bold if [not] crazy notion.

I also wanted a cello and not just the sound of a cello coming from a pit but on stage. I love the visual element of this most human sounding of instruments because the cello in the show serves as Gregor's alter ego. With Yvonne Caruthers, I have the most fabulously talented musician, grounded in classical repertory and coming from a whole career [with] the National Symphony Orchestra. But she is also a creative performance artist in her own right and put together her own show at DC Fringe last year. She is the most exciting and compatible of collaborators. She will try anything and offer much besides. So it goes back and forth without any of us getting mired in egos or who's in charge. That can become so boring.

Similarly, the moment I met Joey Wade, our Projection Designer, I knew I had found someone whose sense of play, problem solving, and enthusiasm for furthering our work together is soul-satisfying.

Perhaps the biggest challenge was collaborating on the aspect of animation. Because I had never done this before, I found myself waiting for the images. The technical aspects of dimensions and simply the math to bend images on the raked floor for instance boggled my mind. It takes loads of time. [Animation Artist] Janet [Antich] and I console ourselves when we think of this September run as our "first iteration."

I love bringing actors into a process where they are shaping the development of a new work based on their strengths and understandings of a work. In this production, for instance, I have a most talents young man, Ari Jacobson [in the role of] Gregor, who has a beautiful voice and whose knowledge of eastern European and Jewish music is substantial. He is co-creating songs with Yvonne through improvisation.

What can audiences expect if they come and see your production?

I hope that they will begin thinking about the many possible layers of Kakfa's stories and come up with their own response and interpretation. I hope they will experience not just the "weird" which is what I think a lot of people expect of Kafka, but the odd juxtaposition of joy and loneliness, of Kafka's comic sensibilities, as well as his ability to tap into our deepest nightmares. I hope they will find moments of sympathy - and not just with Gregor but with all his family members.

What's next for you as well as the Alliance for New Music-Theatre?

We hope to remount Kafka's Metamorphosis for performances in New York and we plan to take it to the Prague Fringe Festival next May and possibly to other venues in Europe. I mentioned the chamber opera Samaritan, which we hope to produce. We will also be embarking on a long-term collaboration with choreographer-director Liz Lerman in an extension of The Civil Wars Project: Healing Wars. This will include Alliance participation in Standing Down, a Wounded Warriors service program involving readings, discussion, and participation in improvisation.

For further information on this production, the show schedule, and to access soundclips from the rehearsals, consult the Alliance for New Music-Theatre's website. Tickets can be purchased online via EventBrite.

Graphic: Courtesy of Alliance for New Music-Theatre Website

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