America is a story of emigration and at the same time an anti-educational novel: someone seeks his fortune in the New World and becomes a nobody. In ludicrous adventures, Kafka describes the social decline of his hero and humorously and sarcastically dissects the American dream. He tells of being a stranger and losing touch with the world and of the existential search of a homeless man in the modern world.
Kafka's unfinished novel, also entitled The Missing Man, begins with a promise: "When the sixteen-year-old Karl Roßmann, who had been sent to America by his poor parents because a maid had seduced him and had a child by him, sailed into New York harbor in the already slow-moving ship, he saw the statue of the goddess of freedom, which he had been watching for a long time, as if in a suddenly stronger sunlight." In New York, Karl is taken in by a rich uncle and later cast out on flimsy grounds. While looking for work, he meets two tramps who take advantage of him, finds a job as an elevator boy under the care of the head cook at the Hotel Occidental and ends up as a servant for the former singer Brunelda. Eventually, he gets a job as a technician at the Oklahoma Nature Theater.
Premiere May 18, 2024
Further performances: May 31, June 27 and July 7, 2024
