METAMORPHOSIS by Franz Kafka
Directed by Tasos Sagris
Link to watch on YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWZ2eavgMkQ
Starring
Sissy Doutsiou, Symeon Tsakiris, Stevi Fortoma, Loukia Anagnou, Thomas Havianidis. Music: Whodoes. Radiohead. Arvo Part. Einsturzende Neubauten. Jani Christou. Godspeed You Black Emperor. Max Richter
Lighting
George Papandrikopoulos
Video art
Alkistis Kafetzis, Kipseli Film Coop, Void Optical Art Laboratory, Miltos Arvanitakis
Mask Construction
Coralia Krikelli
A cinematic documentation of one of the 20th century’s literary masterpieces—Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka—adapted for the stage and directed by Tasos Sagris. After a five-year run (2020–2025) in leading Greek theatres, this groundbreaking production arrives in its filmic form.
Critically acclaimed actress Sissy Doutsiou makes history as the first woman to portray Gregor Samsa, in a performance described as transformative and deeply unsettling.
Officially supported by the Franz Kafka Society in Prague, which hailed the show as “one of the finest theatrical adaptations of a Kafka work in history.” Produced by The Institute for Experimental Arts, with support from the Cultural Centre of the Czech Republic in Athens.
Franz Kafka is one of the greatest enigmas of the 20th century. Closed to himself, he studied all possible selves, cut off from the world, understood the world more deeply than all other writers of his time, hidden from the eyes of the people, looked all the people in their eyes.
Kafka, an observer of the collapse, a screenwriter for silences and neurosis, an enemy of the totalitarian spirit, a photographer of a bloodbath, an anatomist of Power, stands on the side of the outcasts of this world, those who have been deprived of the present and all that remains for them is nostalgia of the past and the hope for an unknown life hidden in a distant future.
The only way for us to be free is to be transformed.
Kafka refuses to surrender, dares to look at the present as a trap and prove to us that what seems clean and healthy, in our world, is sick and dirty, and the solutions given to us for our problems are a trap, an invisible prison complicated all around us. Social life itself, which parasitizes on us, turns all those who try to resist and heal the wounds into wounded parasites of this world, deniers of the ruling class, destroyers of normality, monstrous cacophonies. Kafka calls us to rebuild the world that is collapsing within us. But to start this project, we must first to transform ourselves.
DIRECTORE’S NOTE
Continuing with The Institute for Experimental Arts the research on “in yer face” theater—with the theatre shows on Sarah Kane (4.48 Psychosis) and Rebecca Pritchard (Yard Gal), the study of the sacred Balinese theater and Japanese Butoh, the ideas of Antonin Artaud, the theater plays and anti-conformist way of thinking of Jean Genet—we choose to bring on stage one of the most important literary works of the 20th century, The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka. In this way, we offer the public the opportunity to face the “radical evil,” the repetitive and unquestioning obedience to destructive norms and the way they reproduce a horrible world, a machine of destruction.
Repetitive movements and glimpses of ordinary life, icy faces, still objects, frozen moments, small details, close ups, cut ups, micro focus, cinematic language, fast, oversized stroboscopic video projections, seizures, a carousel of distorted memories, expressionistic light shows, sacred horror, a theater show for an audience with shut eyes. A supremacist, abstract, fragmentary theatrical setting, where objects and faces seem to explode and at the same time remain motionless like an old distorted photo of a big explosion.
An expressionistic theatrical act but not expressive, a very deep emotion that is suppressed, mechanisms of the neurosis that no form of psychoanalysis can understand. Nice, tender, lonely tragedies, the seasons that change and yet everything remains the same forever; until the moment of the inner explosion, until the transfiguration, until the Metamorphosis.
THE INSTITUTE FOR EXPERIMENTAL ARTS
An international platform for avant-garde theater, multimedia performance, spoken word poetry, visual art, and theory. Founded in 2008, the Institute has shaped contemporary theater with works like:
- The Maids (2011) by Jean Genet, echoing through social movements during economic crises with the cry: “Let’s not live as slaves.”
- I Die Like A Country (2012) by Dimitris Dimitriadis , documenting the collapse of a society.
- 4.48 Psychosis (2013–2015) by Sarah Kane, exploring the breakdown of identity.
- Night! (2017–2018) by Rebecca Prichard, delving into the hopes and violence of modern youth.
The METAMORPHOSIS by Franz Kafka comes to reveal the ruins of life hidden within us, to warn us that in this world, whoever cannot obey the orders is suddenly transformed into a parasite.