Toronto, Canada, April 15, 2001.

Harbourfront's World Stage Festival is proud to announce the premiere of KAFKA IN LOVE - a 'water-opera' conceived and directed by Thom Sokoloski, produced by Autumn Leaf Performance. KAFKA IN LOVE is a mixed media performance integrating a 60 minute three character silent film, 6 synchronized swimmers, water-masks/puppets, one live actress, soundscape and an ensemble of 8 light manipulators inside the Hart House swimming pool.

The soundscape includes works by Canadian composers Lesley Barber, Rainer Weins, Linda C. Smith and Bruce Nicol, international composers Gyorgy Kurtag, Dimitri Shostakovich mixed with Sephardic chant, O Yuke Conjugate and Sigur Ros.

The story begins in 1936 Germany. Gerti Wasner, a well-know aquatic artist and member of the counter youth movement growing more suspect of the Nazi Germany's darker goals (the future White Rose movment), is about to unveil a performance piece of unofficial art, entitled KAFKA IN LOVE. A work prohibited from being part of the Berlin Olympics by orders of the Ministry of Propaganda and People's Enlightenment. Gerti Wasner's work is inspired by the 10 day love affair she had with Franz Kafka in 1913 while both visited the Hartenburgen Sanatorium in Riva, Italy to treat their respiratory ailments. When Kafka arrived, he was struck by Gerti. His somewhat estranged fiancé, Felice Bauer, was refusing to answer his incessant 3 letters a day so Franz Kafka, for the first time in his 24 years of life, was to let himself fall in love. No one knows what really happened for those10 days in Riva, Kafka destroyed almost everything, including the fairy tales he wrote daily to Gerti and all but four journal entries about their escapades. Kafka left Riva as elusively as he arrived and now over 20 years later, Gerti Wasner is to remember him for the last time.

For the pool, director THOM SOKOLOSKI, , lighting design JOHN DENNISTON, bathing costumes PATRICIA EDWARDS with mask, wardrobe Aleksandra Podbereski, music supervision by CHRISTINE SEKI, with mask and puppet consultation by BRAD HARLEY. Assistant director NATASHA MYTNOWYCH and stage manager KENDRA FRY. The pool cast includes KIRSTEN JOHNSON (Gerti Wasner) and SIX synchronized swimmers from the Toronto Synchronized Swimming Club and the Centre of Excellence choreographed by DEBBIE SANDS. For the film, director THOM SOKOLOSKI, production designer TAMARA ULISKO, associate producer JOHN CROCKFORD, director of photography JOHN DENNISTON and technical director and editor KEITH HOLDING, whose Bar-Life Series won the 2003 Best International Documentary at the New York International Film & Video Festival. The film cast includes AVI PHILLIPS (Franz Kafka), KELCI ARCHIBALD (Gerti Wasner) and ZORANA SADIQ(Felice Bauer).

Thom Sokoloski has an accomplished career as an independent creator and artistic director of Autumn Leaf Performance. He began his work in theatre in 1969 at LaMama in NYC, then continued in Paris, where he studied at L'Ecole Jacques Lecoq and with the Polish Lab Theatre. He performed and directed his earlier works at festivals in Avignon, Nancy, Edinburgh and Munich. Returning to Toronto in 1979, he directed the Native Theatre School and founded Autumn Leaf Performance. With ALP and as an independent, Thom has produced and directed over 50 works including his own creations and plays by Shakespeare, Ionesco, Genet, Strindberg, Mishima and Beckett. Works include the Dora winning punk-musical Sid's Kids and many of the operatic works of R. Murray Schafer, including RA at the Ontario Science Centre (83) and the Holland Festival (85), Hermes Trismegistos for Ars Musica in Brussels/Liege (90) and inside Union Station for the du Maurier World Stage Festival 1992, Requiems for the Party Girl (93), The Crown of Ariadne (92) and The Greatest Show staged outdoors in Peterborough (89) in a carnival setting Thom also initiated a highly successful series of contemporary music culture called SONiC BOOM (94-97) that included his own performance installations Artaud's Cane and Anxiety of Immortality; and operatic works by the Banff Centre, Vancouver New Music, Chants Libres, Michael Nyman and His Band, URGE Collective, the Master Musicians of Jajouka and film-music events with Nexus/Atom Egoyan and the Evergreen Club/Peter Mettler. In 1996, he directed multi-media productions of Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire and Stravinsky's The Soldier's Story for Belgium's I Fiamminghi. In 1999, he produced OPERA BOOM, the first-ever season of new opera from across Canada, which included Peter Hannan's The Gang, Jean Piché's Yo soy la desintegracion and directed Rainer Wiens Down Here On Earth. He directed a work-in-progress of a new performance-installation The Death of Virgil with music of Jean Barraqué, a remount of Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire, a dance-performance to Transfigured Night and finally Electric Flesh, an electroacoustic opera by Wende Bartley which world premiered at the Opéra de Lyon (Musique-en-scène Festival). He then developed and produced 14 Remembered by Ahmed Hassan which premiered at Massey Hall and with the Banff Centre and the French Cultural Department Claude Vivier's Kopernikus, which toured to Banff, France, England, Opera of Montreal and Toronto. Kafka In Love marks Thom's return to pursuing independent creative projects.

KAFKA IN LOVE premieres April 26, 2003 with two shows at 9pm & 11p. Other presentations include; Sunday, April 27th at 9pm, Saturday May 3rd at 8pm and 10pm and Sunday, May 4th at 8pm and 10pm and an additional show for May 10th at 9pm.

For reservations please call the Harbourfront Centre Box-Office at 416-973-4000 Tickets are $45-$60. Groups of over 8 receive a 15% discount. Contact Autumn Leaf Performance at 416-363-1677 For more information on Autumn Leaf Performance, please visit www.autumnleaf.com

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