METAMORPHOSIS has changed. In the Hong Kong version of Franz Kafka's existential story about a man who wakes up to find he has turned into an insect, the insect no longer exists. Metamorphosis 95 is the last in a trilogy of versions of the story by Sand & Bricks, one of Hong Kong's few experimental theatre groups. The group first performed a Metamorphosis play, as a metaphor for their own doubts about the future of Hong Kong, in the days before Tiananmen Square 'changed everything for us'. According to director Kwong Wai-lap, the version of the story that will be performed at the Arts Centre this weekend 'shows how much our thoughts about 1997 have changed since the first time we put the play on in 1988'. 'The first production reflected the bubble that everyone was living in,' Kwong said. 'We felt uneasy about what would happen, but nothing had happened yet.' He said while the set and parts of the script were quite realistic in 1988: this time they were far more abstract. It was full of jokes and metaphors. 'We have got rid of the insect entirely,' Kwong said. 'After all, everyone knows that there will be a metamorphosis. That's boring. What's interesting is how it affects all the other characters.' The younger sister of the insect-man has a big part in Metamorphosis 95. 'She has been featured in the other two versions, but she was rather pragmatic and passive,' Kwong said. 'This time she gets very angry about what is happening. 'Hong Kong people have been very passive about the changes that are happening to them. It is about time that we got angry, and I think it is about to happen.' The group was founded in 1987, by a group of APA drama graduates, art critics and visual artists, all in their mid-20s, who were alarmed at the complacency of local theatre. They were initially intent on having a non-hierarchical structure: but democracy came at too high a price they found, as soon as the half-dozen co-directors began to argue about priorities. Kwong said that one person thought language was most important, another believed scripts should be thrown out in favour of movement and compelling visual effects. In 1990 the whole debate came to a head. 'It was 1990 and we were putting on a play called Roseland,' Kwong said. 'It was so democratic that we decided we couldn't work together, so everyone created their own space in the theatre and rehearsed separately.' On the second night, one actor, who felt he had been ignored more than the others during the rehearsal process, suddenly broke away from the form of the performance. 'He climbed to the roof of the studio and handcuffed himself there,' Kwong remembered. The actors stopped mid-play and started debating with him, asking: 'What are you doing?' 'You interpret it,' he shouted back bitterly. 'We discussed it for hours afterwards,' Kwong said. 'He wanted attention, and he wanted to destroy the whole structure of what we were doing. He said we were not democratic, and he was right; we realised then that we were being naive.' So now there is one director with the final say, 'although we still push each other to the point where where we are unhappy with the others', he said, describing these heated debates as 'constructive'. Money, of course, is a problem for any small group, particularly one that is openly political, without the pre-established reputation of a larger group such as Zuni Icosahedron (which has its own fund-raising difficulties). Initially Sand & Bricks was supported by the City Contemporary Dance Theatre, which provided a performance space. But now that has gone, and, as Kwong said: 'We are going through a crisis again.' A few years ago the group applied to the Government for a $30,000 grant. It received $10,000 and a letter - after the show - to say the assessor had not been happy with the artistic standard, or with the size of the theatre which was 'too small'. 'We wrote back with copies of the reviews we'd had in the newspapers, asking whether the newspaper critics were not useful for assessment,' Kwong said. 'We didn't get a satisfactory reply. 'We never knew who the assessor was. But if they want to send someone with conservative tastes to an avant-garde show then the whole thing is a waste of time.' It is not the money, or even the lack of affordable rehearsal space that is leading this group to its crisis. People are growing older, a bohemian lifestyle is less appealing, their priorities are changing. 'I realised it recently, when we had such a shortage of space that we were forced to rehearse through the night,' Kwong said. 'And I couldn't do it. It would have been fine three years ago, but now we have got full-time jobs and it's impossible to stay up night after night.' Metamorphosis 95, Arts Centre Studio tomorrow and Saturday. In Cantonese, with English synopsis. Tickets call 2734-9009
