As I reflected upon last weekend’s opening shows at Kyoto Experiment the entire week, the notion of gaze in theatre kept coming back to me. How does the spectator gaze at the performing body? How does the performer look back at the spectator? Kyoto Experiment is now in its 13^th edition having been founded by Yusuke Hashimoto who left the festival to a trio of new directors Yoko Kawasaki, Juliet Reiko Knapp and Yuya Tsukahara just as the pandemic started. This year’s edition is the first festival under their direction with international artists showing works in person. Every year the Festival has a particular key concept, a framework within which the works are being presented. This year’s theme uses the Japanese onomatopoeic word ‘teku teku’, meaning walking at a steady pace at a long distance and adds the English word ‘new’ to the word. The juxtaposition of the two languages is quite clever. As directors explained in their artistic statement and in the interviews in the Japanese media, the idea does not cover all of the programming in the festival, but is more of a way to ask questions, to re-think about how we walk and connect with one another (walking/back and forth) and transcend the current situation in the world.

I left Toyooka last weekend. During the Festival I saw far more shows than I had time to write about. Following the initial quite radical and innovative works, it seems that the Festival programme has shifted its focus to something more familiar in both content and form. I would characterise some of these performances mentioned below as a some sort of return to angura aesthetics. These aesthetics are co-opted to tell very personal stories rooted in the present, but they are definitely not angura per se and even recycle strategies employed by  other Japanese companies and directors in recent years. These diverse companies use choric strategies for individual confessions (monologization of dialogue), durational performance, pop dance and multi-dimensional scenography. Some of these performances are more successful than others.

Review of Neji&co Cue.

The third day of Toyooka Theatre Festival was the busiest for me so far as it was a three-show day. The Fringe programme has proven to be more interesting and innovative than the main director’s programme. In that respect, this is a very refreshing experience in comparison with Avignon or Edinburgh festivals where the sheer breadth of fringe programme makes it an impossible task to separate the good from the bad. To illustrate, this year’s Edinburgh Fringe brochure runs to 371 pages. Sometimes less is more.

The first performance of the day was Cue by the recently formed company neji&co led by dancer/choreographer Pijin Neji. Neji is a former Butoh dancer having performed with Dairakudakan, a famous Japanese butoh company. Following his work with this company, he decided to go independent and even worked abroad with choreographers such as Josef Nadj. However, it seems that this new company is a departure from his previous work and of course, &co in the company means that he intends to bring in some new people to work with. In case of Cue, this is another dancer and sound designer/musician/performer. At the Festival, Cue was performed at a small studio theatre of a local arts college and is presented as part of Fringe showcase (Fringe selection is another programme strand). The premise of the showcase as explained in the press release here (Japanese only) is that younger riskier performers would be able to present the work without too much burden, but with some restrictions in terms of venue and format.

Review of I saw a newt by Takuya Takemoto.

This week marks the start of Toyooka Theatre Festival in the northern parts of Hyōgo prefecture. This festival was created by Oriza Hirata, a key figure of Japanese contemporary theatre, to revitalise this area in the depths of rural Japan. As Hirata explained at a symposium I attended last month, many young people have left the area for bigger cities. Last year the festival was cancelled due to the pandemic, the previous one in 2020 was maintained, but with a reduced programme. The festival itself has international ambitions and this year features one performance from France. The performances are taking place in many of the cities and villages around the main hub in Toyooka. There is also a Fringe programme, but unlike Edinburgh Fringe or Avignon Off, the selected companies (about 10) here are being supported with small grants (¥500,000= £3000 for full shows or ¥100,000=£600 for work-in-progress) and they are offered the space free of charge. Given the current discussion and complaints about Edinburgh Fringe, perhaps this is one of the models to think about. According to reports on Twitter, there are some signs from Arts Council England that it might be going in that direction.

Last weekend I was in Kyoto. It was also the day of the Moon-viewing (Tsukimi) or mid-Autumn Festival and several shrines in Kyoto organised moon-viewing events. However, I was there for a different reason - to watch the semi-stage reading of Bernard-Marie Koltès’ Dans la solitude des champs de cotton (In the Solitude of Cotton Fields) by Japanese theatre company chiten.* I knew about this company from my producing days when I met a Japanese programmer/producer who told me about their work.  Chiten also did the Japanese premiere of the Nobel-Prize winning Elfriede Jelinek’s Sports Play in 2016 which I produced for the London 2012 Olympics. French playwright Koltès is also well known to me as I have translated and directed his Tabataba in Croatia and France. I have also seen numerous productions of the Dans la solitude. Naturally, I was curious about the approach director Motoi Miura and his actors would take and interested in how their collaboration with French actor Pierre Carnio would turn out. It’s important to note that this performance is a part of Eve Series where the company presents very stripped-down versions of plays. The premise is that the audience encounters a text rather than a staging. So, my analysis here is more of an encounter rather than any kind of review even when it may seem like one. 

It’s been nearly a month since I arrived, so I had a little break last week. Today’s post is all about comedy.

While in Tokyo two weekends ago, I also caught up with a colleague from Ireland and an expert on Japanese comedy whom I know from a symposium at the University of Salford. When he suggested we go and see some rakugo performance, a Japanese form of comedy, I immediately jumped at the opportunity because I have never seen it live, only recorded. Rakugo performances have been popular since Edo period, although the term is of a more modern making. It is essentially a form of storytelling in which the storyteller remains seated usually on a pillow (makura) and plays all the parts using specific gestures and only a fan and hand towel as props.

Review of New Illusion by chelfitsch, director Toshiki Okada.

Contemporary theatre often has a habit of turning against itself and this is no truer than in EIZO-Theatre that internationally renowned director and playwright Toshiki Okada has started practicing in recent years. I have previously seen Eraser Mountain which incorporates elements of EIZO-Theatre at the Festival d’Automne in Paris and has live performers, but this is the first time I am seeing this type of Okada’s theatre form raw with no performers at all.

Shinkansen no. 383 arrives to Shin-Osaka station and I am once again faced with a maze of underground tunnels, entrances and exits just like in Tokyo. By now I am somewhat used to navigating my way and quickly find a way to a local train that will take me to my rented apartment in Awaji neighbourhood, where I will be staying for the next month. My whole fieldwork trip couldn’t be done without the help of  Kansai University in Osaka. I’m fortunate to be based in the middle of Japan so I can make side trips to see theatre in the Kansai region or back to Tokyo. It’s only two and a half to three hours by train from any major hubs. It’s already ten days since I’ve arrived here. I’ve been mostly reflecting on the fieldwork so far and setting up further meetings.  

On my second day in Japan, I was at the Waseda Shōgekijō Drama-kan at the invitation of Kamome Machine theatre company. Since I have been following the company’s work for the past year and presented a comparative paper on their work at the Regional Asian Theatre Working Group Meeting of the IFTR*, I was keen to see their work in practice, rather than on video or audio, and equally excited to check out the venue founded by Tadashi Suzuki at the famous Waseda University. The theatre played an important part in the underground (angura) theatre movement in the 1960’s. I have been reading and writing about it since my master’s degree on the legacy of angura theatre today. This is the venue that has been instrumental for the development of experimental theatre practice in Japan. The venue went through several transformations and in 2012 the former building was demolished. Three years later, a renewed Drama-kan, with Suzuki’s blessing, was built as a place for experimentation for new generations.

At the end of last week, I spent two full days in Nagoya for Aichi Triennale. This is an internationally renowned contemporary arts festival held in various cities across Aichi prefecture. It also includes performing arts programme. I’ve been following the programme of the Triennale for nearly a decade both as a producer/programmer and a researcher and now I finally had the chance to sample the offer in person. The theme of this edition is “Still Alive” inspired by a series of works entitled I Am Still Alive by Japanese conceptual artist On Kawara. Today’s blog entry is a reflection on this series.  You can read more about this fascinating artist here.

It was a hot sweltering evening, and I was speeding across Tokyo to meet Yudai-san for the first time in person. As I arrive at the Sasazuka station five minutes early, I receive a Whatsapp message that he’s on the way and to make sure I wait in a nearby department store with air-conditioning. I quickly find the department store to the right of the station exit hoping that I won’t completely melt away. It is however not meant to be. The covid regulations in Japan stipulate that doors and windows must be always open with air-conditioning on. I manage nevertheless to find a spot near the entrance of a drugstore. I see a shelf selling all sorts of things to cool you down. The one with a Japanese and English sign ‘instant ice’ catches my eye. For the next ten minutes, I contemplate nonsensically on whether I should buy one. Perhaps if I use it, I’ll turn into ice. When his tsukimashita (I have arrived) message pops up, the shelf becomes a distant memory.

In this first post, I’d like to share why I am starting this blog.

This website is a part of my PhD project on contemporary Japanese theatre and specifically my three-month fieldwork in Japan. You can read more about me and the name for the blog here. I am hoping to post reviews of theatre performances, extended essays, embedded pieces from theatre rehearsals and share my daily experiences of Japanese theatre, culture and society. I’m also hoping to give you a little insight into how theatre and arts are produced in Japan.