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Upcoming Dates

I, Josef is now available for touring across India and globally.

If you represent a school, university, cultural organization, arts venue or an organization interested in bringing I, Josef to your audiences, please get in touch with Gaurav (+91 9818925599) or contact@kaivalyaplays.org

No scheduled dates at the moment.

Past Performances

Saturday 14 September at Blank Canvas, LTG Auditorium Delhi

Saturday 7 September at Goethe-Institut New Delhi

Friday 6 September at Goethe-Institut New Delhi

About The Experience

Heavy footsteps, an abrupt shout, muffled voices, rustling papers, a gavel’s clack, the city's hum, eerie silences, a ringing phone, sharp whispers, a cacophony of machinery, a jarring telephone ring, frantic scribbling, clang of a metal gate, a helpless scream... An unresolved fate.

 

I, JOSEF is an immersive binaural audio and multimedia installation that invites the audience to step into the shoes of Franz Kafka’s most well-known character, who is inexplicably arrested and put on trial for an unspecified crime. 

 

This adaptation of Kafka’s Der Prozess (The Trial) is re-imagined through a unique first-person perspective that transports the listener into K’s unfathomable world through binaural audio, offering a three-dimensional immersive sonic and visual experience. Audiences are invited to enter a dark room and put on state-of-the-art headphones, placing them at the heart of the narrative and entangling them in the labyrinthine mind of Josef K as if the action were unfolding in their own consciousness.

 

🗓️ Dates, Time and Location / Click Here to See

🎟️ Tickets and Registration: Free entry with prior registration on bit.ly/ijosef67 (Kaivalya Plays website). Only 30 audience members in every slot – please arrive 10 mins before your slot time. Unclaimed slots may be given out to walk-in registrations. 

 

🗣️ Language: Available in English and German, audience members can switch between the two. 

 

⏱️ Duration: 45 minutes (approx.)

 

📍 Location: Siddhartha Hall at Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan New Delhi, 3 Kasturba Gandhi Marg.

 

Presented by Kaivalya Plays in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan New Delhi to celebrate #100YearsKafka, this headphone theatre production is a thought-provoking theatrical experiment and unique auditory odyssey into Kafka’s world that confronts absurdity, dread, guilt, isolation, powerlessness, and the human condition at large.

I, Josef

🗣️ English, German            ⏱️ 45 Minutes 

An immersive multimedia experience based on Franz Kafka's Der ProzessThe Trial. 

 

Presented by Kaivalya Plays in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan New Delhi.

Press & Media
Overviw
About The Show
Schedule
Creative Team

Creative Team

Directed and designed by Gaurav Singh Nijjer

Script and adaptation by Varoon P. Anand

Voiceovers by Paul Heeren, Matthias Dünnwald, Marta Kübler, Kriti Pant, Varoon P. Anand, Gaurav Singh Nijjer and others

Production assistance by Aaraadhye Natarajan and Anoop Gupta

Backstage and installation assistance

  • Premiere, New Delhi: Riddhijit Chattopadhyay, Kanva Chaudhary, Aaaradhye Natarajan, Shivani and Kamlesh

  • Next Act Festival, New Delhi: Riddhijit Chattopadhyay, Kanva Chaudhary, Aaaradhye Natarajan, Shivani, Kamlesh, Anoop Gupta and Saumya Upadhyay


We would like to thank Aarushi Khanna, Anja Riedeberger, Farah Batool, Abhyudai Dhawan and the staff of the Goethe-Institut New Delhi for their support in realizing this project.

Aaraadhye Natarajan

Aaraadhye Natarajan

Aaraadhye is a theatre enthusiast currently studying at Shaheed Sukhdev College of Business Studies, Delhi University. He's been a part of multiple productions at the school and college level, with performances in Atelier (World's largest campus theatre festival) and India Habitat Center's college theatre festival. When he's not acting, Aaraadhye sings, writes and plays the flute.
Kriti Pant

Kriti Pant

Kriti Pant is an actor, trainer and voice-over artist based in New Delhi, India. She has performed nationally and internationally, working across different styles, media and communities. She is also a founding member of The Tadpole Repertory, one of Delhi's most prominent theatre groups. She helps run the company's Looking Glass Project, a workshop program which encourages people across all ages to actively engage with and invest in the arts. She has a particular interest in working with young people and is currently devising a new performance for young audiences.
Paul Heeren

Paul Heeren

Paul Heeren is an Astrophysicist, Data Scientist and Project Manager, currently working at Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan New Delhi. During his years as a researcher in Astrophysics was engaged in various science outreach activities, and authored a number of articles for German Astronomy magazines. He has been a bookworm since his childhood and loves reading out stories to everyone who finds the patience to listen.
Anoop Gupta

Anoop Gupta

Anoop is a theatre practitioner based in New Delhi. He has acted in theatre productions with different theatre groups in Delhi. His interest of work lies in physical theatre and text-based narratives. He is interested in making devised solo theatre piece. His play "ऊपर वाला कमरा" was recently staged in New Delhi, India.
Marta Kübler

Marta Kübler

Marta Kübler studied German and came to Germany. There she studied law and became a tax investigator. Then she got bored and came to India. Here she teaches German, as a Polish woman, as her roots lie in Poland, although her heart beats for the German language and for India. She likes to take photographs and lives for the moment
Varoon P Anand

Varoon P Anand

Varoon P. Anand is the Artistic Director of Kaivalya Plays and a facilitator specializing in applied improvisation. His multi-disciplinary training includes improv training from Danielle Scott, Shawn Kinley, Elana Fishbein and Lacy Alana; clowning from Ashwath Bhatt, Gardzienice physical theatre techniques under Anna Helena McLean, mentorship in Classical Theatre by Ignacio García, and Forum theatre training from React UK. Additionally, Varoon teaches Stella Adler's Method acting, Rudolf Laban's Eight Efforts, and Rasa Theory from Natyashastra, among others. Varoon began his career in 2006 at the renowned Theatre Guild of Ancón in Panama. He has won Best Actor at the Short+Sweet Festival, as well as Best Director and Best Writer at the 48 Hour Film Festival Delhi. He has received over 20 commissions from the Embassy of Spain, Argentina, Ecuador, the Danish Cultural Institute, the Instituto Cervantes and Goethe Insitut to create work for Indian audiences. In 2018, he received the Refunction grant from Goethe-Institut to create Unravel, an improvised mental health piece performed in India and UK. In 2019, he was the first Indian to showcase at the Almagro Classical Theatre Festival in Spain with Marta la piadosa, and received the Gender Bender grant for Aguebao exploring gender and data. Additionally, Varoon has received grants the Connections Through Culture India Wales (2021), IFA Research on performer safety (2022), Moleskine Creativity Pioneers Fund and EU Mediafutures Artists for Media grant for Mining Hate (2023), among others. He continues to explore new ways to present and teach the techniques of improv, along with his other specialties.​
Gaurav Singh Nijjer

Gaurav Singh Nijjer

Gaurav Singh Nijjer (1994, New Delhi) is a theatre-maker, creative technologist and designer from New Delhi, India whose artistic works explore technology and media in live performance. He brings together his experience in design, digital cultures and data to explore new ways of engaging audiences, in the theatre, at home and elsewhere. He is one-half of the Delhi-based theatre collective Kaivalya Plays and works as a freelance artist with artist collectives in India, United Kingdom and Europe. He recently completed the German Chancellor Fellowship where he conducted a 12-month arts research project on digital theatre and hybrid performances with the Berlin-based Rimini Protokoll. Gaurav studied at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London as a Chevening Scholar. His recent artistic works include ABSURDO (2023), Mining Hate (2023), Climateprov (2023), Trust Me, It’s a Forward (2023) The Amazing Flabby Breasted Virgin & Other Sordid Tales (2022) and Lifeline 99 99 (2021). As a creative technologist, his work often brings live audio, coding, live camera and video, digital platforms, APIs, automations and other digital technologies and tools onto the stage. He has previously received the Parivartan Artistic Research grant for AI in Indian Theatre, the AI to Amplify Fellowship by Goethe Institut, the Stage Jame #4 grant by Schaubude Berlin, the Befantastic AI Arts Fellowship, C3: Creativity, Codes and Community and other grants to support his work in technology in theatre. As an arts manager, Gaurav is the General Manager at Kaivalya Plays, an Indian performing arts organization known for their work in applied improvisation and adaptation of foreign-language texts. Here, Gaurav co-created the Theatre Management Fellowship, a unique training initiative that focuses on the strategic management and creative administration of theatre. Under Kaivalya Plays, Gaurav also directed Lifeline 99 99 (2021) and Luz Negra (2020), devised Aguebao (2019) and performed in Unravel (2018). He is also the Communications & Community Manager at The Nursery Theatre, a London-based improvisational theatre company with students, performers and audiences spread out across the world. He also reviews theatre and art experiences for the UK-based platform North West End UK. As an actor and director, Gaurav is a performer and founding member of The Living Room Collective and El Clavileno, the latter being India’s only Spanish language theatre group. He previously worked at one of the oldest and most prominent cultural institutions in Delhi, the Little Theatre Group (LTG) Auditorium as a consultant, overseeing their marketing operations and curating programs for their new black box studio, The Blank Canvas. His acting credits include Yasmine Reza’s Art, Manav Kaul’s Peele Scooter Waala Aadmi, Kristo Sagor’s Threesome Without Simone and Jorge Luis Borges’ Funes The Memorious, among other work in Hindi, English, and Spanish. He has previously directed plays like Alvaro Leal’s Luz Negra, Badal Sircar’s Juloos and Footnotes, inspired by Yasmine Reza’s Art. He has performed at festivals like ReConnect (2020), Old World Theatre Festival (2019), AlmagroOFF Classical Theatre Festival (2019), Thespo (2017) and has received recognition at numerous educational institutions with the collegiate theatre society Fourth Wall Productions. As a freelance marketer, Gaurav has worked with brands like Atlan, SocialCops, Josh Talks, Parallel, FreshMenu, among others, in various capacities and occasionally offers marketing, digital and creative consulting services. He has an undergraduate degree in Management Studies from Shaheed Sukhdev College of Business Studies (SSCBS), University of Delhi with a specialization in marketing (Class of 2016).
Matthias Dünnwald

Matthias Dünnwald

Originally from the beautiful city of Cologne Matthias Dünnwald followed his passion for music and literature by studying Science of Music as well as German Language and Literature before he started exploring different parts of Asia. After working with NGOs, theatre and music groups and as a German Language trainer he is now settled in Delhi working for Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan as a project manager promoting German as a foreign language in private schools. Apart from his work, he spends most of his time tracking down new music for his record collection.
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Media & Gallery
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Partners & Collaborators
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About Goethe-Institut New Delhi

 

The Goethe-Institut is the cultural institute of the Federal Republic of Germany with a worldwide presence. With 151 institutes in 98 countries, it promotes the German language abroad, fosters international cultural cooperation and conveys comprehensive information about Germany. For over seventy years, the Goethe-Institut has enabled international cultural exchange, improved access to the German language and supported the unimpeded development of culture and science.

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About Kaivalya Plays

 

Kaivalya Plays is a performing arts and production company led by Varoon P. Anand as its Artistic Director and Gaurav Singh Nijjer as its General Manager. Since 2012, they have worked consistently, been very noisy, and built transcultural associations across India and the world. Their artistic work includes original, devised theatre performance which are multilingual, interactive and hybrid, use technology and media on stage as well as are built using techniques of improvisational, documentary and physical theatre. Their training and educational programs span drama and performance, design, production, arts management and applied improvisation to areas like mental health, language learning, business skills and others. They’ve undertaken arts research projects such as the Safety in the Performing Arts in India (www.arts-safety.org) supported by the India Foundation for the Arts (IFA), amongst others. They have received multiple artistic commissions and grants, such as EU MediaFutures Artist for Media grant, Goethe Institut’s Refunction and Gender Bender grants, amongst others. Their recent artistic work includes ABSURDO (2023), Mining Hate (2023), Ollantay (2022), Lifeline 99 99 (2021), Luz Negra (2020) How To Disappear Completely and Never be Found (2020), Unravel (2019), amongst others. Most recently, they received the Creativity Pioneers Fund 2023 from the Moleskine Foundation.

For more information, visit www.kaivalyaplays.org

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