The performance is born from a work around the world of Franz Kafka in which three different narrative cores intersect one another: some biographical elements of Kafka himself; the story of the central character of the Metamorphosis, Gregor Samsa; and the one of an imaginary homonymous dancer who remains a prisoner of the obsessive repetition of his performative materials in view of an imminent debut.
The work started in 2015 at Holstebro, in the Danish group's headquarters, and it is the first direction signed by Eugenio Barba outside of Odin Teatret and without his actors. A project produced directly by Nordisk Teaterlaboratorium (the production branch of Odin Teatret, which has produced all the shows directed by the Master, from 1964 to the present) in collaboration with the TPE Foundation (Turin) and Gitiesse Artisti Riuniti (Naples).
After two previews in 2018 (in June at the international Naples Theatre Festival and in December at the National Theater of Tuscany, in Florence), the show debuted in 2019 at the TPE Foundation/Teatro Astra (in Turin), which co-produced the show, to then be presented at the Teatro dell'Arte-Triennale in Milan and in the University of Bologna. The show - almost always sold out - was received with great excitement by national critics.