Kafka Before Kafka: When Two Men Tried to Talk and Everything Fell Apart

Theaterfotografie
Verfasst von Michael Seirer

The first Austrian staging of Kafka's earliest surviving work. 70 minutes. No escape.

Somewhere between 1903 and 1907, a young Franz Kafka - not yet the Kafka of cockroach nightmares and impossible trials - sat down and wrote a story about two men trying to have a conversation. It went badly.

Beschreibung eines Kampfes (Description of a Struggle) is for only two performances on stage at the Josefstadt's Probebühne, and it's the first time this particular work has been staged in Austria. Given that Kafka lived just up the road in Prague, that feels both overdue and somehow appropriate. Kafka was always arriving late to places that should have been expecting him.

All photos can be found at my Gallery Website.

Roman Schmelzer in Beschreibung eines Kampfes, Josefstadt

The Premise (Such As It Is)

Two men meet at night. They begin to talk. They begin to walk through Prague. And then reality stops cooperating.

What starts as casual conversation gradually dissolves into something surreal, anxious, and darkly comic. Language doesn't clarify - it obscures. Every word creates more distance. The "struggle" of the title isn't physical. It's the impossible fight to actually reach another person through the fog of words, assumptions, and the private chaos inside your own skull.

If you've ever had a conversation where you said everything right and still felt completely alone afterward, Kafka wrote this for you. In 1903. Before anyone had a word for it.

Surrealism Before the Surrealists

Here's the thing that makes this text remarkable: it reads like surrealism, but it predates the Surrealist movement by two decades. Kafka wasn't following a trend. He was documenting what consciousness actually feels like when you stop pretending it's orderly.

Space warps. Time fractures. The boundaries between what's happening and what's imagined dissolve until the distinction stops mattering. Director Veit-Jacob Walter stages this in the Probebühne - Josefstadt's intimate experimental space with only a couple of seating rows - which turns the psychological claustrophobia of the text into something physical. Three actors. A small room. Nowhere to hide. This intimate space sucks you in and makes the experience much more intense than in the huge main hall of the theater.

Why This Matters More Than the Famous Stuff

Everyone knows The Metamorphosis. Everyone knows The Trial. Those are Kafka refined, Kafka in control of his tools. Beschreibung eines Kampfes is Kafka raw. It's a young writer trying to capture something he can barely name - the vertigo of modern consciousness, the loneliness of the urban night, the horrifying gap between what you mean and what comes out of your mouth.

It's messier than the later work. More fragmentary. More honest, maybe.

And it's funny. Not in spite of the dread but because of it. The absurdity of two people spiraling into complete incomprehension while politely walking through a beautiful city - that's comedy. Dark, merciless, deeply Kafkaesque comedy, decades before "Kafkaesque" was even a word.

Ljubisa Lupo Grujcic at Beschreibung eines Kampfes, Josefstadt

Kafkas Drawings as Inspiration

Only in 2019 a sketchbook of Kafka was discovered in a safe in Switzerland showcasing his talent to draw. These drawings have been an inspiration for the team - the actors move and bend just as the figures in the drawings do - surreal and deformed.

Roman Schmelzer and Ljubisa Lupo Grujcic, Beschreibung eines Kampfes, Josefstadt

70 Minutes of Honest Theater

This isn't a production that's trying to impress you. It's trying to unsettle you. This is where Josefstadt takes risks - no safety net, no grand spectacle. Just three actors, text, and the audience's willingness to sit with discomfort.

At 70 minutes with no intermission, it's a concentrated dose. You go in, you get lost in Kafka's nocturnal consciousness, and you come out the other side wondering whether the last real conversation you had was actually real at all.

Roman Schmelzer and Zsofia Lili Orban, Beschreibung eines Kampfes, Josefstadt

See It

Beschreibung eines Kampfes
by Franz Kafka
Directed by Veit-Jacob Walter
Theater in der Josefstadt / Probebuhne, Vienna

Premiered February 21, 2026
70 minutes, no intermission

Cast: Roman Schmelzer, Ljubisa Lupo Grujcic, Zsofia Lili Orban

Photos from the Fotoprobe at seirer-photography.com

All photos can be found at my Gallery Website.

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Michael Seirer https://www.seirer-photography.com
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