2025

Schlosstheater Moers

A theatre piece by Franz Kafka

“I have set up the burrow and it seems to have turned out well. It is as secure as anything in the world can be secured.” This is how Kafka’s profound story “The Burrow” from 1923 begins. An animal, perhaps a type of badger, has built itself a labyrinth, underground fortress that is supposed to protect it from all adversities and enemies. But at the moment of completion, the longed-for peace is disturbed by a noise. The search for the cause of the hissing becomes increasingly paranoid and leads to the realization that the perfect shelter has become the perfect prison. The security-obsessed animal is defenselessly at the mercy of its enemies.

Like a blueprint, in Kafka’s experimental setup we recognize the contradictions of our current way of life: the doomed desire to control the world, which leads to a loss of control, and an economic growth dictate that destroys our freedom in its self-devouring dynamic. Is there a way out of this dilemma? Kafka's answers raise further questions and thus pass the task on to us.

In his production, we confront this seemingly insoluble entanglement with world views of contemporary philosophers who show ways out of the impasse: departure instead of apocalypse, care instead of control, sharing instead of exploitation, regeneration instead of exhaustion.