In the 1990's a small English-speaking theater troupe was staging an adaptation of Kafka's short stories "Report to the Academy" and "The Hunger Artist" in Prague. When a member of the troupe was told that a local paper had described their production as "grotesque theater," she became very insulted. But the paper wasn't being critical of the play's production, it was describing a theatrical style which, as Webster's puts it, is "characterized by fanciful or fantastic human and animal forms .... that may distort the natural into absurdity, ugliness, or caricature." Prevalent in 19th century art and literature, and certainly an influence on Kafka, it remains important to this day in The Czech Republic. To show the continuing strength of this tradition in Prague, we need only look at what contemporary artist David Cerny has made of the Czech nation's most potent nationalist symbol, the statue of St. Wenceslas astride a magnificient horse.
Cerny's "upside down Wenceslas" hangs outside the Lucerna movie theater (not far from where the original statue stands), where Kafka often went to see movies.
