A ground-breaking French-Japanese production of Franz Kafka's 1915 novella, The Metamorphosis, has cast a very unlikely actor in the lead role of Gregor Samsa, a salesman who wakes up and inexplicably finds himself transformed into an insect and is hidden away by his family.
In this modern version, instead of discovering that he has turned into an insect, the man awakens to find himself a robot. And, for the first time ever, an actual robot was created specifically to play the role in the stage production.
Director Oriza Hirata worked with Hiroshi Ishiguro to conceptualize and make the leading robot for the show entitled, La Metamorphose Version Androide. The robot has a skeletal body with human like hands and a white face which French co-star, Irene Jacob, compares to "Masque Blanc" or white mask used in theatrical productions.
