Stefano Boselli (Theatre) published the article “Deliberate Starvation: Hunger Artists in Kafka, Różewicz, and Sinking Ship” in Global Performance Studies 6, nos 1–2 (2023): Hunger. The article explowes how a negative action, the decision to abstain from food, can be enacted on stage. Examining hunger as a conscious choice to avoid food for spectacle, through the critical lens of actor-network theory (ANT), Boselli illustrates several ways to make hunger visible in performance. In the West, self-inflicted starvation became a form of entertainment in the late 19th century, when "living skeletons" and hunger artists were shown at circuses, fairs, and amusement parks. Franz Kafka’s short story “A Hunger Artist” (1922) looked back at the profession’s history, identifying the main components of the spectacle of hunger. Polish playwright Tadeusz Różewicz turned the short story into a play, The Hunger Artist Departs (1977), exploring the potential for dialogic interactions and developing side-characters only implied by Kafka. By contrast, the contemporary NYC-based company Sinking Ship created A Hunger Artist (2017), an adaptation that expanded the short story’s theatricality around a single performer who plays multiple characters with the aid of all the resources of theatre, from puppets to audience members “enrolled” in the show.
