Although television screens, reality shows, Franz Kafka's "Metamorphosis" and puppets might sound like a strange combination, the Connecticut Repertory Theater's Studio Works play "Meet the Samsas" interweaves this motley combination into a tragic yet humorous look at the Samsa family's foray into reality television.
The play, based on Kafka's novel "The Metamorphosis" about a man who transforms into "monstrous bug" and the toll it takes on him and his family, opened on Friday night and is an Original Puppet Arts Production.
"The show is set up like a reality television series, only with puppets," said Mary Gragen Rogers, the director, co-writer and video editor of the play and 3rd-year MFA candidate in puppetry. "We are using reality TV to our advantage to highlight key story elements. There are confessionals, commercials and flashbacks that inform the action on the stage. In 'Meet the Samsas,' we wanted to create a tragic comedy that would evoke laughter and sadness. A young man transforming into a bug one morning is both ridiculous and tragic."
The show is set up as a reality show that is controlled and manipulated by an omniscient director, whose commanding voice is heard but never seen. The family of four - Mr. Samsa, Mrs. Samsa, Grace and Gordon - live out their lives in a somewhat-retro nuclear family but, in reality, have their own problems and issues with the show and each other that they deal with.
The puppeteers, clad in black, hunch over the small-scale set to bring the small, wooden marionette puppets to life.
"Moving with incredible grace, the performers are able to manipulate the marionettes as well as act," said Gragen Rogers. "The movement vocabulary and stylized human caricatures converge with the text. The term 'Kafkaesque' has come to be synonymous with small anonymous individuals trapped in an existential nightmare from which there is no escape or awakening. Not only are the puppets trapped in this world, but so are the puppeteers."
After Saturday night's performance, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Paula Vogel offered her thoughts and ideas about the production and posed questions to the play's creators.
"This was a unique gathering of artists," Vogel said, adding that it was an interesting idea to choose to tell Kafka's story through puppets. "It makes us go back and rethink Kafka."
Vogel also discussed the idea that that story reflects our current reality-show-fueled society and depicts the American family. "I think this is a great moment to tell Kafka like this," she said.
Sarah Beth Parks, a 3rd-year puppet arts candidate and the play's co-puppet designer, co-creator, co-writer and puppeteer for Mrs. Samsa, also commented about the need for audience to have their own ideas about the play. "This is a play that asks collaboration from the audience," she said.
The audience can also sense this trapped feeling with four television sets built into the set and the set itself resembling an actual television. Although small in scale, the whole production packs a lot into its short, 50-minute time frame.
"I hope that the audience will be inspired to begin their own discussions about all of the topics within the play," Gragen Rogers said. "From television to familial relationships, the play is a vehicle for conversation."
'Meet the Samsas' continues its run at the Studio Theater of the Drama/Music Building from Wednesday to Sunday. Evening performances start at 7:30 p.m. Wednesdays and Thursdays, and at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday evenings. The Sunday matinee performance starts at 2 p.m. Ticket prices range from $11 to $28.
Contact Natalie Abreu at
Natalie.Abreu@UConn.edu.
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