About the Play:

Finalist for the 1991 Governor General's Literary Award (Canadian equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize)

The Trial of Judith K. is a full-length black comedy by Sally Clark. A reimagining of the classic dystopian novel The Trial by Franz Kafka, switching the gender of the lead character, making her a modern business woman who finds herself arrested and accused of an unknown crime. Her nightmare task is to prove herself innocent without ever knowing the charges or the evidence against her.

The Trial of Judith K. follows Judith, a cutthroat executive climbing the corporate ladder. From the outset, the play takes a dark and absurdist path. Upon waking on her 30th birthday, Judith finds two men in her bedroom waiting to arrest her. They allow her to go about her day, with the proviso that she appear at an obscure courthouse later in the week. Judith has no idea what she's accused of but soon realizes she's on trial for her life. Judith tries to clear her name with the help of some suspicious characters, but the harder she delves into the bureaucratic nightmare, the more firmly she is bound by it and the more obscure the nature of her charges becomes. Sally Clark takes Franz Kafka's existential parable The Trial and turns it into a searing condemnation of our assumptions about power, privilege, and personal freedom.

The Trial of Judith K. premiered in 1989 by the Canadian Stage Company in Toronto and was nominated for the Dora Mavor Moore Award for Best Play and for the Governor General's Literary Award. Since then the play has been successfully staged at several professional theatres across Canada and performed in college theatre productions as a showcase of student talent.

Cast: 4 female, 3 male

What people say:

"The futility of the individual before a dehumanizing bureaucracy has never been so funny." — Toronto Tonight

"Sally Clark's great talents as a playwright are her seemingly effortless ability to shift from light to dark and her finely tuned understanding of life's rich ambiguities." — Toronto Star

About the Playwright:

Sally Clark is a critically acclaimed Canadian playwright who was born in Vancouver, where she currently lives. She is best known for her frequently produced play Moo, and has been playwright-in-residence at Theatre Passe Muraille and the Shaw Festival. She is also an accomplished painter, director and filmmaker. Her plays have received a Chalmers Award, two Dora Mavor Moore Award nominations, and a Governor General's Award nomination.