The Trial, Metamorphosis, In the Penal Colony: three theatre adaptations

by Steven Berkoff (Retold by)

Overview

Three distinctive adaptations from a master of total theatre, Steven Berkoff fuses all the elements of drama together in a whole theatrical experience. Combining movement and mime with text to achieve a heightened dramatic intensity, Berkoff takes Kafka’s stories and transforms them into a powerful dramatic expression of the inhumanity which plagued the twentieth century and continues unchecked today.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781738476909
Publisher:	Aurora Metro Books
Publication date:	07/31/2025
Pages:	184
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 1.25(h) x 9.00(d)

About the Author

Steven Berkoff was born in Stepney, London. After studying drama and mime in London and Paris, he entered a series of repertory companies and in 1968 formed the London Theatre Group. His plays and adaptations have been performed in many countries and in many languages. Among the many adaptations Berkoff has created for the stage, directed and toured, are Kafka’s Metamorphosis and The Trial, Agamemnon after Aeschylus, and Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher. He has directed and toured productions of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus also playing the title role, Richard II, Hamlet and Macbeth, as well as Oscar Wilde’s Salomé.
Berkoff’s original stage plays include East, West, Messiah: Scenes from a Crucifixion, The Secret Love Life of Ophelia, Decadence, Harry’s Christmas, Massage, Acapulco and Brighton Beach Scumbags. He has performed his trilogy of solo shows, One Man, Shakespeare’s Villains and Requiem for Ground Zero, in venues all over the world.

Steven has acted in films include A Clockwork Orange, Barry Lyndon, Octopussy, Beverly Hills Cop, Rambo, Under the Cherry Moon, Absolute Beginners and The Krays. He directed and co- starred with Joan Collins in the film version of his play Decadence.

He has published a variety of books on the theatre such as the production journals I am Hamlet, Meditations on Metamorphosis and Coriolanus in Deutschland. Berkoff’s work has led him to traverse the globe, and his love for travel is apparent in his book Shopping in the Santa Monica Mall: The Journals of a Strolling Player.