I, Josef

Sep 2024

Director, Designer

A multilingual, immersive multimedia performance-installation based on Franz Kafka's Der Prozess / The Trial.

Heavy footsteps, an abrupt shout, muffled voices, rustling papers, a gavel’s clack, the city's hum, eerie silences, a ringing phone, sharp whispers, a cacophony of machinery, a jarring telephone ring, frantic scribbling, clang of a metal gate, a helpless scream... An unresolved fate.

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 Franz 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.

Presented by Kaivalya Plays in collaboration with the Goethe Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan New Delhi to celebrate #100YearsKafka.

45 minutes, English and German.

This experience contains mentions of violence and abuse, listener discretion is advised.

If you’d like to bring I, Josef to your institution, school, university and workplace, please
get in touch at contact@kaivalyaplays.org or visit www.kaivalyaplays.org/ijosef

Visit the Kaivalya Plays website to read more about the performance-installation.

I, Josef is an experiment, a leap into the unknown. It is a response to the limitations and possibilities of our times. Instead of a conventional stage, we invite you into a dark room, a space where your senses are heightened, and your imagination is called upon. Here, the audience is not merely a spectator but a participant, a co-creator of the experience. Franz Kafka’s seminal work, written over a century ago, still resonates powerfully. The narrative, where an individual is suddenly arrested without any explanation and is entangled in a legal system that is opaque and unyielding, feels eerily relevant in contemporary India. The questions Kafka raises—about authority, justice, and individual freedom—seem more pertinent than ever.

We chose to strip away the stage and actors to create an intimate, first-person “headphone theatre” experience. By immersing you in a binaural soundscape, where voices, footsteps, whispers, and city noises surround you, we hope to bring you closer to Josef’s confusion, his despair, and his search for meaning. This shift from a third-person narrative to a direct encounter transforms the way we perceive the text. It challenges us to feel what Josef feels, to experience his world from within.

This piece is not just about innovation for its own sake; it’s about making theatre more accessible and adaptable. I, Josef is designed to travel, to move beyond traditional arts spaces and enter classrooms, offices, courts, even the internet, and to reach new audiences, perhaps those who might have never set foot inside a theatre.

Our collaboration with the Goethe-Institut New Delhi and its network in India has been grounded in the application of theatre to civil society concerns, such as mental health (Unravel, 2018) and gender (Aguebao, 2019). Thanks to a stellar team of artists and unwavering support by the Goethe-Institut New Delhi team, this experience is available both in English and German, bridging cultural gaps and opening new pathways for learning and dialogue. At Kaivalya Plays, this is indeed our mission. Varoon and I are committed to this transcultural approach, that blends multilingualism and technology in the performing arts.

Lastly, I, Josef is not just a performance—it is a conversation. A conversation between Kafka’s text and our times, between you and the unseen characters, and perhaps most importantly, between you and yourself. Step inside, put on the headphones, and let the story unfold around you.

— Gaurav Singh Nijjer
Director and Designer, I, Josef

Creative Team

Directed and designed by Gaurav Singh Nijjer

Script and adaptation by Varoon P. Anand

Voiceovers by Paul Heeren, Matthias Dünnwald, Marta Kübler, Kriti Pant, Varoon P. Anand, Gaurav Singh Nijjer and others

Production assistance by Aaraadhye Natarajan and Anoop Gupta

Production by Kaivalya Plays

Backstage and installation assistance by
Premiere, New Delhi: Riddhijit Chattopadhyay, Kanva Chaudhary, Aaaradhye Natarajan, Shivani

We would like to thank Aarushi Khanna, Anja Riedeberger, Farah Batool, Abhyudai Dhawan, Salim Khan and the staff of the Goethe-Institut New Delhi for their support in realizing this project.