Metamorphosis

Grzegorz Jaremko

Premiere: 09.06.2023 Play duration: 2 hours 40 minutes with a break

Upcoming dates

Premiere: 09.06.2023 Play duration: 2 hours 40 minutes with a break

Upcoming dates

One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin. The first sentence of Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis has become a popular cliché to describe today’s societies of alienation and fatigue. Although at first glance it reads like the beginning of a body-horror or a metaphor for depression, it compels us as an example of refusal to take part in the global chase after profits and effectiveness.

If we approach Gregor Samsa’s transformation as a political gesture, we can see it as an echo of the Scrivener’s refusal from Herman Melville’s novella. The point of departure for experimenting with Kafka’s story is the need to map out our reality of excess, overstimulation and burnout, and to find a way out of oppressive territory. The Metamorphosis then becomes a story of existential improvisation or escape that takes the form of migration within, a strategy of preserving a species threatened by the late-capitalist environment.

Although Kafka’s parable ends with the death of the protagonist on a trash heap, it is still a read that opens up the laboratory of selfhood. How can we tap the transgressive potential of mutation? Is it possible to capture the pleasure of turning into Something Else?

The ontological strategy of operating on oneself is fuelled by Kafka’s subversive sense of humour, his vampirical letter personas, but also his fascination with early cinematography as well as various accounts of becoming-an-animal relayed in his miniature pieces.

Cast

Information

Director: Grzegorz Jaremko
Text and dramaturgy: Mateusz Górniak
Fragments of 
Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis translated by Juliusz Kydryński
Dramaturgy Cooperation: Jowita Mazurkiewicz
Set: Anna Maria Karczmarska, Mikołaj Małek
Costume: Rafał Domagała

Light, video: Szymon Kluz
Music: Justyna Banaszczyk

Choreography: Iza Szostak
Make up: Zuzanna Siemińska, 
Liliana Szłapa-Boratyńska

Production Manager: Zuzanna Kubiak
Stage Manager: Marta Śmierzchalska

Cast: Bartosz Bielenia, Małgorzata Hajewska-Krzysztofik, Ewelina Pankowska, Piotr Polak, Magdalena Popławska, Jan Sobolewski

Calendar

May 20

Metamorphosis

Grzegorz Jaremko
37. Dni Sztuki Współczesnej / Białostocki Ośrodek Kultury, Białystok

May 31

Metamorphosis

Grzegorz Jaremko
Theater
Polish subtitles

June 01

Metamorphosis

Grzegorz Jaremko
Theater
Audio Description
English subtitles

June 02

Metamorphosis

Grzegorz Jaremko
Theater
Ukrainian subtitles

See also

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