Metamorphosis, from man to ape
Has taken on the title role in Kafka’s Ape, a character dealing with feelings of alienation
Actor Howard Rosenstein’s current job involves an intense exploration of anthropomorphism, specifically “going ape.”
He’s preparing to perform the title role in Infinitheatre’s production of Kafka’s Ape, adapted from a short story by Franz Kafka. Titled A Report to an Academy, the story was published in 1917, two years after Kafka’s famous novella, Metamorphosis, in which a man found himself transforming into a creeping insect.
Kafka, the grandson of a butcher, apparently empathized with creatures great and small.
In order to transform into a credible ape, Rosenstein has been practising his moves, wearing latex on his face and spending quality time watching Jane Goodall and her wild chimpanzees.
Having portrayed a string of nasty guys over the past few years (King Claudius in Persephone Theatre’s Hamlet, a slippery lawyer in Arthur Holden’s Ars Poetica and a sexual predator in Paul Van Dyck’s Penumbra), Rosenstein sees this role as a progression, of sorts.
“I’ve gone from sleazy guys to animals,” he said, “It’s a transition, that actually seems to me pretty good.”
Only his ape has a dark side, too. “He’s a killer for hire, a mercenary,” Rosenstein explained. “He’s had to become human in order to make sure that he doesn’t have to stay in a zoo. So he’s learned how to speak a language. And the people who captured him are part of a multibillion-dollar military industry. We’re calling the company Greywater.”
The name could easily be mistaken for Blackwater, as in Blackwater Security Consulting, the controversial private company that provided security and support to U.S. troops in Iraq and other locations. The company, based in Virginia, is now known as Academi.
But back to Kafka’s character, Red Peter. “He is an ape,” Rosenstein explained, “He is captured in the jungle. And in the trip over to North America on a ship in a cage, he decides that the only way out for him is to become human, to learn the language, to get the education and to become an employee of this company that has just captured him.”
Understandably, he doesn’t want to end up living in a zoo. In Kafka’s story, he finds work in show business. In the Infinitheatre version, adapted and directed by Guy Sprung, the ape, now called Mr. Redpeter, finds employment in the theatre of war, with Greywater.
Either way, we meet him in lecture mode. In this case, he’s addressing an annual meeting of Greywater shareholders rather than an academy of scholars.
“What Guy (Sprung) has done is add a layer, essentially,” Rosenstein said. “Kafka, in this particular story, is dealing with his own feelings of alienation, from a society that he was a part of as a secular Jew. They treated him differently because they knew he was Jewish.”
Kafka (1883-1924) was born to a middle-class Jewish family in Prague, when Czechoslovakia was still part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. He was educated in high German and wrote in that language. Yet he felt like a foreigner. “He was treated like an ape,” Rosenstein said. “He was treated as something other than them. He was living in a minority within a minority.”
Hence Montreal anglophones should find a basis for identification with Kafka’s Ape? “Which is one of the reasons why Guy chose this play,” Rosenstein agreed. “Because once in a while the mandate allows him to choose classics, which allow him to reflect Montreal back to itself.”
In connecting Kafka to Quebec as well as to the entire military-industrial complex, “it’s a very interesting, relevant risk, that we’re about to take,” Rosenstein said.
On a personal level, the memorization alone is daunting. Kafka’s Ape runs nonstop for 70 minutes. That’s a lot of words — and monkeying around.
At the time of our interview, Rosenstein and the show’s special effects expert, Vladimir Cara, were still experimenting with makeup. “We don’t want a monkey mask that won’t let me express myself. We want enough of my face exposed. We’re playing with noses, a prosthetic brow.”
He’s determined to get it right. “This is my first oneman show,” Rosenstein said. “It’s one of the most challenging and interesting things I’ve ever done.”