Potential recruits for Kafka's Nature Theatre of Oklahoma (NTO) face an unenviable task: it is not clear what is expected. The Theatre is vast, all embracing and has no limits; it is nature itself. Recruits bring a prior self with them which they will now lose. But it is a leap in the dark with no obvious redemption; it is a theatre but actors are not being enlisted. On duty is the usual cast of clerks, bureaucrats and assistant bureaucrats with the addition of extras dressed as angels. Karl tries to clarify what is expected; do they want engineers, technicians or actor? are qualifications required? are European credentials accepted in Oklahoma? He has no papers; is that a problem? No answer. Finally he is assigned the role of minor technician with the name Negro. Having left one self behind the NTO cannot tell entrants what their new self is to be; would-be 'actors' have to guess-I am not who I was but I don't know who I now am.
It is not a situation that calls for a therapist; Susie Orbach or Adam Phillips can't help these lost souls; the trick is to juggle many selves. Karl does this; he can be an actor, engineer, technician-whatever they want. He is a good liar. Mark Rylance calls this 'using yourself''; in fact he does juggle with multiple selves; there is the prior self that he fears; the next self which the play offers and a third self through which he comments on the first two. It can be unnerving ie when he loses Rooster Byron for a while; lying and self lying certainly feature. Rylance can also use his 'self' to explain other 'selves' Watch The Grass Arena for example and then Barbaric Genius: John Healey's 'self' has been amplified
There is hope for actors joining the NTO.
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