METAMORPHOSIS. Based on the Works of Franz Kafka

“You can kill a person, but you cannot force them to become someone else.” (Robert Antelme) How, when and why do we stop seeing the Other as a human being? At the very heart of Franz Kafka’s work, one can always find explorations of different forms of dehumanisation. The story of Gregor Samsa, who turns into an insect, raises questions about the limits of our compassion for another: how does identification happen, how is the Other constructed, and are we able to accept the Other as part of humanity? This performance seeks to explore the complex dialectical relationship between two distinct political mechanisms (in the broad sense): empathetic identification on the one hand, and dehumanisation on the other. The range of meanings in Kafka’s works is boundless and resists simple, unequivocal interpretations. In seeking to open up their different layers, the performance’s chief aim is nonetheless to engage in dialogue with the reality in which we live. World War I began on 28 July 1914, and just a few days later F. Kafka began writing what is arguably his most famous novel, The Trial (which remained unfinished and was published without the writer’s permission only after his death). Although these two events are not causally related, the experience of war is evident both in this and in other works by the writer. Scholars of Kafka’s work argue that in The Trial he foresaw the totalitarian ideologies that would soon envelop Europe, and also prophesied the nature of that war. When Russia began its war against Ukraine on 24 February, people began to speak of this war ushering in a new stage in European history and establishing a new world order. It may be, then, that we Europeans in the third decade of the 21st century, like Kafka, who lived through World War I, will experience an epochal turning point, after which a new order will prevail in the world. Franz Kafka (1883–1924) was a celebrated Austrian prose writer who wrote in German. He is considered one of the most distinctive and influential writers of the 20th century, a pioneer of modernism and, in the view of the surrealists, one of its forerunners. Born into a Jewish family, he studied chemistry and German studies, then chose to study law, much to the delight of his domineering father, who regarded his literary ambitions as futile daydreams. He worked for almost his entire life at Prague’s Workers’ Accident Insurance Institute, immersing himself in literature in his free time away from the bureaucratic work he hated. He constantly felt torn between his social life and his creative calling, and suffered greatly because of it. He was extremely strict with his own work, and a considerable portion of it was published without his consent only after his death. Hermetic and multivalent, F. Kafka’s prose invites a range of interpretations, often the most contradictory ones. His works unfold in a strange, hard-to-explain world filled with menace and fear, a world marked by instability, loneliness, exhaustion and fear of the future. Oliver Frljić (born 1976) is one of Europe’s most prominent theatre-makers: a director, actor and writer, often called by critics a “theatre provocateur”. On stage, he