SET DESIGN BY RUBY LAW - METAMORPHOSIS BY RICH RUSK

METAMORPHOSIS

Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre, by Rich Rusk [2025]

Set + Costume Design by Ruby Law

"One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke up from a restless sleep, he found that he had turned into a terrifyingly large insect." – Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis.

To commemorate the 100th anniversary of Kafka's death, Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre has joined forces with acclaimed British director Rich Rusk and his team to reimagine this allegorical masterpiece for a contemporary audience.

Our Metamorphosis is a visceral and haunting retelling of Kafka's classic tale in modern-day China. A young man, trapped in a cycle of unfulfillment, dead-end work, and failed relationships, undergoes a grotesque transformation: his body mirrors the shapes and behaviours of a host of insects. Shunned and forced into hiding, he watches as his family, consumed by grief and survival, struggles to navigate life without him until, eventually, they accept his absence completely, moving on as though he never existed.

At first, the space feels deceptively familiar: a cosy, lived-in living room where the family gathers. But beneath this veneer of normalcy lies something unsettling—an industrial labyrinth of industrial, twisting air-conditioning ducts and exposed water pipes. It’s as though the house has been turned inside out, revealing a hidden, claustrophobic world that was never meant to be seen.

As the protagonist’s physical transformation intensifies, so does his emotional fracture from his family, which is mirrored in the stage design. He retreats into the dark maze of ducts; these tunnels are more than just a space—they become a living, breathing obstacle. At times, he hides in the shadows, listening in on his family’s conversations, and at other moments, he desperately scrambles through the ducts, seeking escape from the suffocating walls that close in on him. This design is more than a backdrop; it embodies the existential terror at the core of Metamorphosis. Distorting the familiar and warping the domestic space forces us to confront the ideas of isolation, struggle, and the fragility of identity.

Photography Credit: Jiang Fan + RULA Design Studio