“The New Trial” By Peter Weiss, Adapted By Dennis Yueh-Yeh Li
September 1 to 6
Theater for the New City (Johnson Theater), 155 First Ave.
As part of the Theater for the New City Sets Its Sixth Dream Up Festival
Box office: SMARTTIX (212) 868-4444. – Other info: TNC (212) 254-1109.
“The (New) Trial” is a radical version of “The New Trial” by Peter Weiss (1916-1982), author of “Marat/Sade,” adapted and directed by Dennis Yueh-Yeh Li. The play experiments with identity and power-relations, presenting a surreal look at the life of K, the chief attorney in an international corporation. The play explores K’s obsessive idealism and his self-destructive methodology in helping others. Confined in his own docile body, K is manipulated as the public mask for the corporation to win the “war” over current global market expansion and eventually is abandoned by the corporation once the victory is obtained. The work is staged in a deconstructive way, interwoven and interrupted by excerpts from Kafka’s “The Trial” and by performers’ monologues. It experiments with creating layers of identity, using the presence of the audience as a tool to show the way people manipualte the power dynamic based on who’s watching. Cast of seven.
Complete info: http://www.jsnyc.com/season/dreamup_2015/thenewtt.htm