I, Josef: An immersive multimedia experience based on Franz Kafka’s The Trial

This headphone theatre production, presented in collaboration with Kaivalya Plays to celebrate Franz Kafka’s centenary, is a thought-provoking dramaturgical experiment and unique auditory odyssey into Kafka’s world that confronts absurdity, dread, guilt, isolation, powerlessness, and the human condition at large.

I, Josef is an immersive binaural audio and multimedia installation that invites the audience to step into the shoes of Franz Kafka’s most well-known character, who is inexplicably arrested and put on trial for an unspecified crime.

This adaptation of Kafka’s Der Prozess (The Trial) is re-imagined through a unique first-person perspective that transports the listener into K’s unfathomable world through binaural audio, offering a three-dimensional immersive sonic and visual experience. Audiences are invited to enter a dark room and put on state-of-the-art headphones, placing them at the heart of the narrative and entangling them in the labyrinthine mind of Josef K as if the action were unfolding in their own consciousness.

I, Josef will run from September 6 – 7 at the Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan New Delhi. This 45-minute experience, offered in both English and German, is played out in slots with 30 attendees at a time.
 

Team

Directed and designed by Gaurav Singh Nijjer
Script and content production by Varoon P. Anand 
Voiceovers by Paul Heeren, Matthias Dünnwald, Marta Kübler, Varoon P. Anand, Gaurav Singh Nijjer and others.
 

Partner

Kaivalya Plays
Kaivalya Plays is a performing arts and production company led by Varoon P. Anand as its Artistic Director and Gaurav Singh Nijjer as its General Manager. Since 2012, they have built transcultural associations across India and the world. Their artistic work includes original, devised theatre performances that are multilingual, interactive, and hybrid, use technology and media on stage, and are built using techniques of improvisational, documentary, and physical theatre. Through a focus on education, training and community, their work spans diverse offerings of programs across artistic development, language learning, mental health, gender, accessibility, and transcultural collaboration. They have received multiple artistic commissions and grants through their collaborations with Instituto Cervantes Nueva Delhi, Goethe Institut Delhi, MediaFutures and other cultural partners. Their recent artistic work includes I, Josef (2024), The Pillowman (2024) ABSURDO (2023), Mining Hate (2023), Funes The Memorious (2021), Lifeline 99 99 (2021), Unravel (2019), amongst others. Most recently, they were awarded the Creativity Pioneers Fund 2023 by the Moleskine Foundation.