The Golem: A Dream Play adapted by Daniel Flint from the novel by Gustav Mayrink

The Golem follows the story of Athanasius Pernath, a jeweler in Prague’s Jewish ghetto in the late 19th century who is afflicted with a curious amnesia. When a strange man enters Pernath’s life with a mysterious book, the jeweler begins his descent into a labyrinth of murder, madness, and plots of revenge and unrequited love that eventually bring him face to face with his own dark past and mortality. Or is Pernath’s journey in reality an ascent? The stranger with the book is the legendary Golem who roamed the streets of the ghetto in the 16th Century. He is also the jeweler’s doppelganger – leading Pernath to a spiritual awakening which must be embraced in order to escape the madness of his past. This one-man play is based on the legendary 1915 novel by Gustav Meyrink – whose novels revel in the twists and turns of esoteric philosophy’s convergence with the occult and with the landscape of dreams. As performed by a single actor, the characters in The Golem are revealed to be archetypes and “inherent personalities” within the human mind. The work’s powerful symbolism is drawn from Jewish mysticism and the tarot, and these archetypical characters trace a path of spiritual evolution through the roots and branches of the Kabbalah’s Tree of Life. The Golem is a play that speaks to the desires and difficulties of seeking spiritual truths in the twisted passageways of the human mind. Its vivid images and fantastic plot seek not only to entertain, but to awaken.