Opening excerpt from the script,
adapted from The Trial, by Kafka

The house is dark

THE VOICE: Before the Law stands a gatekeeper on guard. To this gatekeeper there comes a man from the country and asks for admittance to the Law. But the gatekeeper says he cannot admit the man at the moment. The man thinks about this and then asks if he will be allowed to enter later. “It is possible,” answers the keeper, “just not at the moment. If you are so strongly tempted, then just try to get in without my permission. But be advised: I am mighty, and I am only the lowest gatekeeper; from hall to hall there are keepers, one mightier than the next.” The man from the country curses his unfortunate predicament. At first he is loud and merciless. Later, as he grows old, he only mutters to himself. Finally, his eyes grow dim and he cannot tell if it really is getting darker or whether it’s just his eyes deceiving him. But in the darkness he manages to realize a glare that inextinguishably breaks through the gate of the law.

In the background a gate slowly starts to open. The light shines in and intensifies as the gate opens. 8 clerks are lined up on the sides of the stage like a panel of judges. One of them, K., gets up and walks slowly towards the gate.

Now he does not have a long time left to live. Before he dies, all the experiences he has gathered add up to one single question in his mind, which he still has not asked the keeper. “What do you want to know now?” asks the keeper, “You are insatiable.”

“Everyone is striving to attain the law, how can it then be that I am the only one who has asked for admittance in all these years?” “No one but you could gain admittance, since this entrance was intended only for you. Now I am going to close it.”

The gate closes in front of K. with a booming sound

From Kafka’s letter to his father

“Dear Father,

Please understand me. Not so long ago you asked me why I maintain that I fear you. As usual, I didn’t know how to respond, partly because of the fear that you instill in me and partly because, in support of this fear, belong more particulars than I halfway would be able to keep account of orally. And as I now try to answer you in writing, it will be incomplete – because I, also, when I’m writing, am inhibited by this fear and its consequences and because the subject is so vast that it by far passeth my intelligence and memory.”

From a letter to Felice Bauer

“. . . To write is a blessed and a wonderful reward, but for what? Tonight I became aware that it is a reward for serving the devil. This descent to the dark forces, this Nature’s release of fettered souls, dubious embraces and all that can possibly happen down there . . .”