Cal Rep And LBO Collaborate To Stage IN THE PENAL COLONY

California Repertory Company (CSULB Theatre Arts Department) is collaborating with the Long Beach Opera to produce the Southern California premiere of In the Penal Colony, a pocket opera by Philip Glass. Jeff Janisheski, the Artistic Director of California Repertory Company, is directing the production. In the Penal Colony combines theatre and opera to tell Franz Kafka's dystopian short story about the struggles of capital punishment, morality, and the darkness of the human spirit.

In the Penal Colony features a devised theatre piece created from interviews with formerly incarcerated students interwoven into the Glass adaption of Franz Kafka's short story. Director Jeff Janisheski states " This production is set in the here and now: in a country that has the highest prison population in the entire world; where prison labor is a modern form of slavery and prison culture perpetuates an endless cycle of racism and violence. The goal is to listen to the voices that are marginalized, stigmatized and silenced. That is the power of this piece and I am deeply proud to work with Long Beach Opera on presenting this timeless and gripping opera."

Composer Philip Glass states "What fascinates me in this story is the moral inversion that takes place. Kafka, I think, is suggesting that the mere fact of our human incarceration is enough to make us guilty. One of the attractive things about the story for me as a composer is its formality."