Report to an Academy, adapted from Franz Kafka

There is something wonderfully strange about watching a man walk into a room and address an audience as though we were members of a prestigious scientific academy, while telling us the story of how he went from being an ape to becoming human.

In A Report to an Academy, adapted from Franz Kafka’s short story, Robert McNamara takes on the role of Red Peter, a self-reformed ape who has learned to live as a human in order to survive. The audience becomes his Academy, listening to his account of the transformation.

Kafka doesn’t exactly hand his meaning to you on a silver platter. The text is dense and layered, and some of its ideas take time to settle. But what is much easier to grasp is the emotional force of McNamara’s performance.

He is incredibly expressive, both physically and vocally. He doesn’t simply deliver a monologue from the stage. He moves around the space, steps into the audience, changes his posture, his voice and his energy, constantly shifting the atmosphere around him. At times, he is intense and passionate; at others, sarcastic, vulnerable or almost painfully sincere.

There is a real sense of pain underneath the performance. Red Peter has not transformed because he dreamed of becoming human. He learned because he needed a way out. And McNamara makes that struggle feel physical. You can sense the effort, frustration and loss behind every step of his transformation.

That raises one of the most interesting questions in the piece: if survival requires you to become someone else, how much of yourself can you afford to lose?

Robert McNamara carries the entire piece with remarkable intensity and commitment. His physicality fills the room, and his constant movement between stage and audience makes the Academy feel less like distant spectators and more like participants in Red Peter’s strange, uncomfortable story.

An unusual and thought-provoking piece, made particularly compelling by an actor who gives Kafka’s abstract ideas a very human, very physical presence.

There are two more presentations of A Report to an Academy at IMPEERIUM improteater on 26 and 27 August. The Tallinn Fringe Festival continues until 18 September, its programme is here.

Author: Hélène