A Sinking Ship Production

Based on the story by Franz Kafka

CREATIVE TEAM

Created collaboratively by

Performer: Jonathan Levin
Writer: Josh Luxenberg
Director: Joshua William Galb

Set and Costume Design: Peiyi Wong
Lighting Design: Kate McGee
Sound Design: M. Florian Staab
Puppet Design: Charlie Kanev and Sarah Nolen
Props and Toy Theater: Jonathan Levin
Lighting Supervisor: M. Florian Staab
Lighting Associate: Elizabeth M. Stewart
Additional Props and Puppets: Ariel Lauryn

Project Description

"Are you still starving? When are you going to stop...?"

This unique, visually-striking production uses physical theater, Victorian miniatures, puppetry, and a set of simple props to support a powerhouse solo performance. A man sits alone in a cage, starving himself for your entertainment. Once cheered by thousands, the Hunger Artist is now forgotten by everyone except his one-time manager.

A sly social commentary wrapped in an entertaining package, A Hunger Artist takes Kafka’s original story (published in 1922 as fascism was on the rise in Europe) and transforms it into a trenchant meditation on our present moment. At a time of deep social upheaval, what is the purpose of art and entertainment?What does the art we consume say about us—and about our own hungers?

Winner of Summerhall's Lustrum Award for Excellence at the Edinburgh Fringe,
and nominated for two Drama Desk Awards (Outstanding Solo Performance, and Outstanding Puppet Design).

ABOUT SINKING SHIP PRODUCTIONS

Sinking Ship Productions creates work that is the theatrical version of circumnavigating the globe in a questionably seaworthy vessel: grand and ridiculous, unadvisedly ambitious, and possibly delusional as we sail full tilt to the horizon.Sinking Ship, a Brooklyn-based theater company, is the creative collaboration between Jonathan Levin and Josh Luxenberg. Working with a core group of Associate Artists, combining physical theater, puppetry, music and movement in delightful, strange and unexpected ways, Sinking Ship’s productions have grappled with concepts such as the creation and destruction of the universe as imagined by science fiction writers, how a man's search for connection could ultimately lead to complete isolation, and the limits of human understanding through the search for extra dimensions of space in theoretical physics.