Against the grain of the gaze and the performing body

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.

On the second day of the festival, I attended a solo dance performance Imori o mita (I saw a newt) by Takuya Takemoto at the Kinosaki International Arts Centre as part of the Toyooka Theatre Festival’s fringe programme. The performance took place in a small studio near the entrance. The studio space has large floor to ceiling windows opening to the greenery outside. As I enter a strong smell of mosquito incense invades the space, fusing with the intense sound of cicadas. The performer Takuya Takemoto greets everyone as they are populating the seating area just before the sunset. When everyone is seated, he offers mosquito repellent for those who need it. An empathetic gesture.

I saw a newt by Takuya Takemoto, © photo by bozzo

The solo performance begins under the house lights. With no recorded music, the noise of cicadas, the occasional sound of a train and the outside world become the only soundtrack. The performer’s movements are barely noticeable as he faces away from us for the first quarter or so of the performance. This is a piece of slow dramaturgy at its finest. The level of concentration of the performer is remarkable and for the audience it is a test of watching silently. Not an easy task, but one that comes with many rewards. Takemoto would eventually turn around to face us and continue with his ever so slight movements. Trying to catch up with his movements is almost an impossible task. The slowness paradoxically registers as speed inside my eyes as he moves back and forth through the space playing with the passing of time. Both the inside world (other audience members) and the outside world (noises) remind us of this playfulness even when the static noise of cicadas, the slowness of performance and the minimal lighting try to negate it.

In the programme notes, Takemoto contemplates on his residency in Kinosaki from May to July this year and the fact that he has performed this show with or without audience 50- 60 times. He explains that he was born in Gunma prefecture surrounded by three large mountains and when he came to Kinosaki he was fascinated how mountains look different from those in his birthplace, how they are smaller, concrete, and close, a tangible other (具体的な他者). This exploration of concreteness in performance (and it really becomes apparent during the performance) is reminiscent of works by Algerian choreographer Nacera Belaza, such as Les Sentinelles (2010) based on a novel by Dino Buzzati Il deserto dei Tartari (Tartars’ Desert) in which two dancers also move unnoticeably. Similarly, Takemoto repositions the notion of body through exploration of native (furusato, or bled in Belaza’s case) versus performing place to find new concrete sensations of passage of time both within the performer and the spectator. However, Takemoto does not resort to artificiality of recorded sound, but rather his performance strategy is based on natural, raw sound combined with the (in)visible movement. Theatre scholar Kyoko Iwaki (2019) noted in a roundtable discussion that solo performances such as this are emblematic of the wider Japanese performance post-Fukushima context where artists do not want to dialogue with the other on stage. It would be easy to misconstrue this as a negative turn in Japanese performance, but it  is evident that the dialogue does not necessarily need to happen on stage or even in performance space, something that is often forgotten in Anglophone theatre world.

I saw a newt by Takuya Takemoto, © photo by bozzo

On that note, it is interesting to read in the programme that Takemoto found an inspiration in Naoya Shiga’s short story Kinosaki ni te (At Kinosaki) in which a man encounters a newt in a mountain stream and accidentally kills it. Therefore, I saw a newt is perhaps about what happens next. As the night settles into the studio space, Takemoto’s reflection appears in the windows as if someone else was in the garden. The slight smile points to an encounter with the other, a ghost of an animal, an anthropomorphic newt or perhaps the other self.

Overall, Takemoto demands of us to adjust our gaze of the performer and review the way we think about time by going against the grain of the performing body. It might be difficult to watch, but the endurance comes with rewards that can be permanently engrained in our minds. In that way I saw a newt prolongs the dialogue with the work itself outside immediate performance space.

Venue: Kinosaki International Arts Centre

Date attended: 16 September 2022

(as part of Toyooka Theatre Festival 2022)

I saw a newt by Takuya Takemoto, © photo by bozzo