Kafka’s Monkey based on ‘A Report to an Academy’ by Franz Kafka. Adapted by Colin Teevan. Performed by Isabel Shaida. Directed by Naomi Shafer.

“Esteemed members of the Academy! You have done me the great honour of inviting me to give you an account of my former life as an ape.”

Kafka’s Monkey, a theatrical adaptation of Franz Kafka’s A Report to An Academy, is a daring, one-woman performance that touches on themes of origin, autonomy, and collective responsibility. The protagonist asserts she has evolved from ape to man in five short years in order to survive.

While grounded in the world of 1917, the play highlights questions of body autonomy. It asks, how does a person survive under increasingly constrictive conditions? What parts of ourselves do we give up to survive? What does freedom truly mean if one being’s freedom is at the expense of another’s?

ISABEL SHAIDA Isabel Shaida (Red Peter) is a performer and climate activist here in Bozeman, MT. She devises original, ensemble-driven projects and works as a movement director and teaching artist. She was an artist in the 2018/19 SITI Conservatory program, where she trained in The Suzuki Method of Actor Training and Mary Overlie’s Six Viewpoints. She has also studied developmental movement, somatic practice, Grotowski-style training, and Laban movement, and she grounds her theater and her political work in the physical.

Isabel credits her theater work and training with teaching her how to experience and process the world in an embodied way. She believes that through bringing more awareness to our bodies and to our body experience, we can learn to care for ourselves and each other, live in interdependence, and create true structural change. This is the ground from which she creates theater and approaches an audience. Local credits include Nervous Theatre’s Chalk Circle, A Marvelous Party, and Open House (Boise), Stand Stark Still at Verge, and most recently Late, A Cowboy Song at the Blue Slipper. She has also collaborated on productions such as My Barking Dog, Providence and Songs From a New World.

NAOMI SHAFER Naomi Shafer (Director) is a clown, storyteller, and producer whose work bridges performance and humanitarian aid. For seven years, she led Clowns Without Borders, bringing laughter to communities in crisis—from refugee camps to disaster zones. Beyond the stage, she has facilitated clowning workshops for First Responders, partnering with organizations such as Doctors Without Borders and Mines Advisory Group.

Since relocating to Bozeman in 2020, Naomi has woven herself into the local arts scene, collaborating with Nervous Theater, Warren Miller Performing Arts Center, Raison D’être Dance Project, The Verge Theater, and Random Acts of Silliness. She is now proud to serve as co-director of 406Cirque, a growing hub for contemporary circus arts in Montana.