Scene 1: A Dream
Dramatis Persona: Man (Image)
As the bell sounds, a drop of ink diffuses in the sky and turns into ideograms,
arousing a spiritual longing to read.

Scene 2: The Awakening
Dramatis Personae: Gregor Samsa, Bug
Gregor awakens from a dream, realizing that he has transformed into a bug, an ancient soul reincarnate. The clock violently rocks and urges while raindrops dribble from the eave. The bug is too weary to get out of bed and falls back into slumber.

Scene 3:The Door
Dramatis Personae: Baby, Son, Father
A lone baby orphan is dumped outside a door in a winter night. He has no chance of being pardoned no matter how hard he cries because this is a door custom-made for him.

Wu Hsing-kuo’s interpretation intrudes the bug’s subconscious, Kafka’s door within a door and dream within a dream. It is a reading of his inner world from birth, childhood, to adulthood.

Scene 5: Inhibition
Dramatis Personae: Kafka, Bug, Wu Hsing-kuo
Deserted and wounded, deprived of his sister’s care and love, the bug despairs and refrains from moving or eating. He only wishes to vanish from the world.Kafka appears, and Wu Hsing-kuo emerges. Together they encourage Gregor. He must stand up and fight, and he must live, and live for himself.

Scene 4: Love
Dramatis Personae: Sister, Mother, Beloved
The music is forlorn but beautiful, and the move toward life’s candlelight resembles a moth’s into a fire.Gregor’s sister visits him. Having devoured the food she brings, the gratified bug climbs up the ceiling to look out the window, fantasizing about his sister, mother, and beloved residing in a garden full of fragrant flowers.Gregor embraces his beloved lady in a framed painting, but is violently attacked by his father with apples. The picture falls to the ground, and Gregor is injured, with an apple sunken into his back. This is Wu Hsing-kuo’s unique Kafkian rendering of two famous Kunqu scenes “A Garden Stroll” and “An Interrupted Dream.”

Scene 6 Flying
Dramatis Persona: Bird

As the bell sounds, a bird flies over to pick up the bug with its beak. Night turns into dawn. The bird spots an infinite pure land, above which it hovers and glides freely. Dancing to the music, the soul of the bug roams between heaven and earth and ascends into the sky.