‘Metamorphosis’

‘Metamorphosis’, 2014, premiered in London, Barons Court Theatre and Leicester Square Theatre

Director: Nick Pelas

‘Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old’. – Kafka

The research that director Nick Pelas took with ‘Metamorphosis’ by Franz Kafka is aimed to show the universal and multi-cultural aspect of the significations and the story behind the giant cockroach. It is about the myth that is long lasting as well on Nigerian platform with their own specific Nigerian traditions, rituals and linguistic dialects. The insect/cockroach denotes a disgusting animal. Using female interpretations of the situation and the cockroach, in this case, the insect is not only viewed as a disgusting animal but beyond that, she is avoided by family and society. The incapacity to work again, the isolation, determining towards a semiotics of Hunger after something unknown, triggering on an all aspects transformation, including gender, from female to asexuate is a meta-signification, of a different order.

Crawling all over the room means that the female cannot be stagnant and she finds a way of entertaining herself to forget her nightmare and her suffering for a moment. The impact of the transformation makes her, the cockroach, to be isolated from her job, her family, and even from her own thought. Her death, anyone’s death, is a way to escape from their own strangeness and suffering.

So much life around, in and outside rehearsals, bursting of energy in this multicultural production with the common goal of recreating the Kafkian universe of ‘Metamorphosis’.