?An Imperial Message? is the first Hungarian radio play on the festival programme in six years.
The writer Forgách said the idea for the piece came from Szemző, a composer, performer and media artist. The aim was to write a script about Kafka that would show another side of the author, not the depressive writer, but the lovable man, the resourceful counsel with his sparkling humour, the bright, observant man, sensitive to beauty, the man who liked to drink beer and swim, he added.
Gustav Janouch?s Conversations With Kafka provided some of the basis for the radio play.
Real-life episodes also provided inspiration, such as Kafka?s meeting at a playground with a crying little girl who has lost her doll. Kafka tells the girl her doll has embarked on a trip around he world, and he returns each day with a letter from the traveller that he reads to the little girl.
Forgách also wrote conversations between Kafka and Róbert Klopstock, a Hungarian medical student who met the writer in the High Tatras in the 20s, into the radio play. Klopstock, who said Kafka was like an older brother to him, ended up treating the writer after becoming a doctor.
?An Imperial Message? premiered on Magyar Rádió in March of last year. An hour-long version will be brought to the festival in Hvar as well as to the Prix Europa in Berlin on October 20-27.
Source: Hungarian News Agency (MTI) / Photo: MTI
