吳興國版《蛻變》是無數片段的拼貼，包含了多媒體技術的動畫投影，以及當代話劇，現代舞，和京劇崑曲的中國戲曲表演。演出搭配著數位化的背景音樂，以及現場樂隊的樂曲演奏和戲曲唱段伴奏。它依據卡夫卡的故事，加上吳興國的詮釋，結合東西方表演藝術，是一種混合的跨文化劇。此演出極具閾限性，詞彙源於維克多•特納(Victor Turner)重述阿諾德‧范‧杰內普(Arnord van Gennep)的通過儀式三階段中的「過渡」期。特納堅信此階段是「模糊的中間」狀態，具有無限的可能性。蘇珊•布羅德赫斯特(Susan Broadhurst)對閾限性表演多所著墨，認為此類演出有兩種最常見的特點，就是「混合性」與「互文性」。吳興國版《蛻變》結合東西文化，踰越邊界，重組片段，現場演出和數位錄製的配樂交錯，並運用了最新的多媒體技術。我從三個方面的寓意來看它的閾限性：多媒體影像，舞台場景，以及劇中劇。此外，也審慎探索此劇靈魂人物吳興國，個人的蛻變情境。
《蛻變》一劇共有六幕，分別闡述世間不同的閾界。它強調，藉由死亡和輪迴，被孤立或迷失於夢境的今世人類，仍可懷著蛻變的希望。這數位化的演出，應用多媒體技術於講述故事的過程，進而觸及各樣神秘空間與敘述展延。吳興國描述著今世的人類，歷經宇宙的變幻莫測，等待著蛻變一刻的到來。閾界音樂配合著象徵意義濃厚的舞台設計，用以詮釋劇中主角被孤立、遺棄的痛苦記憶。在夢幻情愛的這一幕，吳興國藉由口白和崑曲唱段，來區隔不斷轉換的人物，並結合東方虛構的愛情故事《牡丹亭》與西方卡夫卡的真實羅曼史。觀眾在吳興國的劇中劇，看到了夢中夢。牡丹亭裡的杜麗娘走進葛里戈的舞台，糾結著卡夫卡與三位女性之間的戀情。他們等待著，從夢境中被喚醒。此劇寓意在於，人類要跨入另一世界，必須通過死亡或夢想的中介場域。以他個人經驗為例：被孤立、受譴責為邪門歪道的演出風格，在成功地得到世界肯定之後，終於解除了他心中那巨大的桎梏。吳興國擺脫了卡夫卡的框架，以獨特詮釋方式彰顯其《蛻變》之閾限性。

Wu Hsing-kuo’s Metamorphosis is a collage of numerous fragments, including animated projections through multimedia technology, and Wu’s performing of modern spoken drama, contemporary dance, and Chinese opera, Jingju and Kunqu. A variety of music is presented with recorded soundtracks, and a live orchestra offering background music, and accompanying Wu’s singing of Jingju and Kunqu arias. It is a hybrid play, and an intercultural one, based on Franz Kafka’s story, with Wu’s interpretation and a combination of Eastern and Western performing art. This production is typical of a liminal performance, based on Victor Turner’s restating the intervening phase of “transition” in Arnold Van Gennep’s three phases in a rite of passage. Turner confirms that the liminal phase is an intermediate state of being “betwixt and between, ” a state that offers a storehouse of all possibilities. Susan Broadhurst states that a liminal performance possesses two most common traits: being hybridized and intertextual. Wu’s Metamorphosis is constituted by a hybridization of cultures, the transgression of borders, the synthetic fragments, the interweaving of live music and the digital sampler, and the utilization of the latest media technology. I have read its liminality from the implications in three aspects: the projected images, the mise en scene, and the mise en abyme, plays within plays. And Wu’s personal transformation is also seriously considered, since he is the soul of the performance.
His “Metamorphosis” is divided into six scenes to show different liminal space respectively. It emphasizes that human beings in this life, existing in isolation, or lost in dreams, can still cherish a hope of transformation, through death and reincarnation. This digitized performance has reached mystical dimensions and augmented narratives with the application of multimedia technology into the storytelling process. Wu describes that human beings existing in this life are undergoing the phantasmagoria of the universe, waiting to be transformed. He applies liminal music, and symbolical mise en scene to imply a memory of being isolated, the liminal time when the protagonist onstage is trapped. In the dream scene of love, transforming personae are found in Wu’s speeches and arias, indicating a combination of Eastern fictional romance in The Peony Pavilion and Western real ones between Kafka and his lovers. Wu’s mise en abymen offers the spectators a dream within a dream. It is Du Liniang’s dream put inside Gregor’s, and Kafka is in the dream with his three lovers, strongly suggesting a trapped dreamy state waiting to be awakened. He gives a moral that human beings will reach another world, through passing the thresholds of death or dream. His personal experience is an example to show that one, although trapped in the accusations of monstrous transgression, can be set free because of the final world-wide recognition. Through Wu’s own interpretation free from the frame of Kafka’s, the liminality in his Metamorphosis is conspicuously displayed.

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