Transforming 'The Metamorphosis'

Renowned playwright and director Oriza Hirata and world famous robotics professor Hiroshi Ishiguro’s Robot Theatre Project is now in its seventh year. Although the idea of staging a modern absurdist drama “No Exit” was met with disapproval by the Jean Paul Sartre estate, the theatre project’s adaptation of Franz Kafka’s novella “The Metamorphosis” had its world premiere last autumn at the Kinosaki International Arts Centre and its European premiere at the Automne en Normandie festival, before briefly touring Europe.

In Hirata’s new adaptation, set in 2040, Gregor Samsa doesn’t wake up as an insect, but an android, and the focus shifts from his relationship with the family members – father (Jerome Kircher), mother (Irene Jacob) and younger sister (Laetitia Spigarelli) who soon begin to accept him as he is. 

The new focus, set in the socio-political context of a Mediterranean war, is on a foreign war refugee and medical intern (Thierry Vuu Hu) who’s renting a room in their house. 

And with this concept, Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis” has morphed into the 21st century just as the novella celebrates the centenary of its creation. Putting an android and an immigrant in the same play, of course, invokes discussion of “foreignness”. And the questions Hirata and Ishiguro have been asking their audiences from the start of the project – for example, what distinguishes humans from machines and what exactly makes us humans and not machines – still ring out, loud and clear.

The French cast deserves applause for their effortless acting as well as their interaction with the Repliee S1 robot, which was so natural that the android became an integral member of the cast. But it was the robot and its deft combination with the human actors that took us through a 90-minute journey, provoking thoughts and emotions.

When Hirata staged his robot playlet “Sayonara” here in 2012, performed by Thai and Japanese actors, it was not merely a cultural exchange. As his partner-in-crime Ishiguro was also present, delivering a lecture to engineering students and visiting a robotics laboratory, several engineering students showed up to watch the play. Interaction, let alone collaboration between arts and sciences here is rare and “Sayonara” offered a good example of how it could work. 

With such a literary masterpiece as “The Metamorphosis”, the values and interest of this latest production by the Robot Theatre Project will also spread to European literature aficionados. Film buffs should be excited by the live performance by Irene Jacob, who thrilled in her big-screen performance in “The Double Life of Veronique” and “Three Colours: Red”, among others. It’s not often that these two groups share the same house with engineering students and with the play being in French, it is likely to draw yet another group – the linguists among us.

The writer’s trip was supported by Japan Foundation Bangkok.

 

KAFKA EXPLAINED

“The Metamorphosis (Android Version)” will be on an Asian tour in August and September. It’ll stop in Bangkok as part of the “Unfolding Kafka” series.

For details, keep an eye on www.Facebook.com/|dramaartschula.