Dennis Dugan, Sam McCarthy and More Set for THE TRIAL Industry Readings in NYC

Savage Wonder will present two invitation-only industry readings of THE TRIAL, a new adaptation of Franz Kafka's novel by Savage Wonder Founder and Artistic Director Christopher Paul Meyer, on Friday, November 13, from 7 to 9 p.m., and Monday, November 16, from 3 to 5 p.m., in Tribeca. Each reading has its own cast. Meyer worked from the original German and directs both.

The adaptation puts the comedy back in Kafka, with five actors playing twenty-five characters. When Kafka read the first chapter aloud to his friends, everybody laughed, Kafka included, so hard he had to stop reading. Almost nobody stages it that way. Kafka died before he finished the book. His friend and literary executor, Max Brod, who had been told to burn the manuscript, settled the chapter order himself, set aside the unfinished chapters and published it in 1925.

'A lot of the work we do at Savage Wonder is rooted in absurdism, because we love juggling chainsaws,' said Meyer. 'The Trial is about the horror of a bureaucracy so total it becomes an existential threat. Having fun with something that serious brings out all the colors in the novel. And because Kafka never finished it, there are threads he left loose that we get to pull on.'

Cast members across the two readings include Dennis Dugan (Moonlighting; The Howling; Parenthood; Happy Gilmore 2; director of Happy Gilmore and Grown Ups), Sam McCarthy (Dead to Me; Goosebumps: The Vanishing; Condor), Ephraim Birney (The Gilded Age; Outer Critics Circle nominee; Hartford Stage, Irish Repertory Theatre, The Public Theater) and James Rana (The Band's Visit on Broadway; The Government Inspector, Red Bull Theater; Love's Labor's Lost, Royal Shakespeare Company). The company also includes Ana Anderson (Tartuffe, The Inspector General and The Actor's Nightmare for Savage Wonder), Becca Ballenger (New Amsterdam; FBI: Most Wanted; Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Gulfshore Playhouse), Dylan Crow (Savage Circus, The Actor's Nightmare and Spike Heels for Savage Wonder), Mike Labbadia (company member, Bedlam; Hamlet and Saint Joan, Alabama Shakespeare Festival), Dean Linnard (Tambo & Bones, Playwrights Horizons; Octet, Berkeley Repertory Theatre; three San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Awards) and Brandon Salerno (The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel; Drunk Shakespeare, Off-Broadway). Casting is by Jenn Haltman.

If you're interested in attending, you can request a seat for either reading at info@savagewonder.org; the address is provided on confirmation.