The Metamorphosis
La Metamorfosi
by Franz Kafka
 
Giorgio Barberio Corsetti unveils Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis to the audience in the same spirit with which he has regenerated performative modes throughout his career, and with his talent for creating scenic devices that disrupt the isolation of the theatrical space.
 
Developed in close relation to the reflections and limits imposed by the health crisis, Barberio Corsetti’s new work once again leads the director to immerse himself in the Kafkaesque universe, following the terrible act of his writing as it penetrates the deep gash of social alienation and depression to investigate fragilities and anxieties that, beyond specific turbulences, put us all under the limelight. Following on from Description of a Struggle, Amerika, The Trial and The Castle, he returns to explore the work of the great twentieth-century writer in a creative recurrence through the poetics of the Bohemian author that have decisively marked his forty-year career, ever since his debut on the legendary Beat 72 stage.
 
At this moment in time in which human contact is denied, Barberio Corsetti comes to terms through La metamorfosi with a text that involves bodies and narrates a physical transformation that impinges on both the senses and on language. A paradoxical transformation which manifests itself in the metamorphosis of the protagonist, Gregor, into a cockroach, is also a powerful allegory for a life punctuated by the motions of the soul, the rhythms of work, family and social relationships, overlaps and misunderstandings—elements which encapsulate our current existence—followed by isolation, repulsion, the need to shut oneself up in a room, safe yet separated from the rest of the world, through until total annihilation. Through Kafka’s words, we adopt the point of view of Gregor, an insect who thinks like a human being. We experience the almost cosmic, metaphysical condition of a character who is apparently marked by the evil of a depression induced by the alienation of subordinate work, backbiting, and separation from all forms of sociality. “Speaking in the third person singular, Gregor looks at and tells us about himself, enabling us to see reality through his eyes”—Barberio Corsetti notes—“abandoning the world of humans and transforming himself, taking on another imaginary body, born within the protective cocoon of his bed”. The root cause of this self-denial, which expresses itself in the flight from one’s own identity, is his work and submission to its grueling rules and hierarchical imbecility, with a distant echo of threatening bureaucratic structures and backbiting voices.
 
Language: Italian
Subtitles: English, Greek

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