Max Brod’s dramatization of Kafka’s novel The Castle with associated ephemera including contemporary paper cuttings and correspondence given its first English production by RADA students in June 1963 at the Vanbrugh Theatre leading to its becoming known in the English-speaking world. The John Fernald Company of the Meadow Brook Theatre in Michigan staged the same dramatization by Max Brod in 1970 directed by Milo Sperber.
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTIONS:
RADA script, 96 pp. bound in blue card wrappers secured by metal brads to spine in very good condition. Title page is annotated and stamped ‘Please return to: Royal Academy of Dramatic Art 62-64 Gower St WC1’ and dated 1963. Text block in very good clean condition, occasionally annotated throughout.
1970 edition of the Meadow Brook Theatre programme titled Stage. Volume 3, Number 5, February 12 thru March 8 for The John Fernald Company production of Franz Kafka, The Castle. 18 pp. Illustrated colour card wrappers in good condition. B/w contemporary advertisements, cast list and bios included within.
Additional ephemera includes:
The Times paper cutting dated June 8th 1963 titled ‘Bare Bones of Kafka’
Daily Telegraph paper cutting dated June 8th 1963 titled ‘The Castle Fails to Grip’
The Guardian paper cutting dated 31st May 1963 titled ‘Kafka’s Castle’ including large photograph of students rehearsing
The Observer Weekend Review paper cutting dated 9th June 1963 titled ‘Trapped by Realism’, a theatre round up by Kenneth Tynan
Jewish Chronicle paper cutting dated 14th June 1963 titled ‘Leonard Bernstein’s first venture’
Paper cutting dated 16th September 1992 titled ‘Festival: Berliner, Festwochen, Welcome to Prague’
A 1963 advertising flyer for the Vanbrugh Theatre Summer 1963
A typed letter, unsigned, presumably from James Clark to a Miss Hunziger dated 3rd June 1963
2 X copies of a typed essay titled ‘On Dramatising Kafka’s The Castle’ written by Max Brod
