Renewed illusion

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.

As I enter the basement black box theatre in Tokyo’s Oji area and seat myself in the front row (there are only two rows), I am blinded by two spotlights. This is perhaps the beginning of Okada’s latest production New Illusion. In the space, there are two life-size screens. In fact, there are three screens if we count one for the English subtitles. The lights fade out and the two screens come to life. There is no live performance. On screen two performers and a musician contemplate on the performance that happened yesterday in the same space. In the first half they discuss where all the set and props were placed. They take a particular interest in the chair that was used in the show. With classic Okada-style movements divorced from the speech,  sporadically punctuated by music, they outline on the screens the contours of the chair.  You could imagine the brush of the performer’s bodies. Okada mentions this painting style in his directors’ notes. During the performance, the image/actors also pass from one screen to another.

Oddly, to me it felt quite liberating not having to deal with actors struggling with the text or tripping over the set design. The slickness of it all meant that the whole focus was on reverting back to the audience. For example, when they discuss how hard the seat of the chair is. In the second half of this one-hour performance, the spotlights come on screen (remember the beginning of the show!) the chair becomes real, physical one, as they continue discussing the show from the day before. Narratively, the second half also poses the question whether theatre or the world has changed at all.

As I watched the action unfolding on the screens, I occasionally found myself glancing at other audience members. For the illusion was not happening on the screen, but in the auditorium. The whole theatre installation seemed to me like a parody of theatre. I really wanted to laugh aloud. However, my fellow audience members seemed to remain still, but perhaps they were also containing their laughter. Or perhaps I’m imagining things. But isn’t that the point of the ‘illusion’? At one point, someone starts coughing badly and they must leave. At last, some drama! Unfortunately, the somewhat sombre atmosphere returns as soon as the auditorium doors are shut. Therefore, as an illusion the production is a successful repositioning of theatre mechanisms, as a satire of theatre-making and theatregoers.

Moreover, I was quite intrigued by the presence of the third screen, the subtitles in English. It is the presence of this written text in another language that (un)intentionally brought a different quality to the performance. It reminded me of Armand Gatti’s poem/text Didascalie se promenant seule dans un théâtre vide (The stage directions are walking alone in an empty theatre). In Gatti’s text, the stage directions are waiting for a future show. In Okada’s production, it is not the future, but past stage directions that were left hanging in the space long after the yesterday’s performance finished.

It would also go amiss if we didn’t question whether EIZO-Theatre and in particular New Illusion brings anything new to the theatre making. This is important to note because the poster for the production quite boldly states: ‘Reality or fiction? Present or past? Existence or absence? Video or theatre? Or something as yet unseen?’. Okada’s own writing on EIZO-Theatre equally mentions EIZO-Theatre as something new. It is this last bit, the claim that it is new, that seems to me problematic in terms of its position within theatre landscape rather Okada’s own past work. It is not good to just use a Japanese term and call it new. We need to be aware of other theatre performances when creating and discussing the work. Given that Okada’s work circulates internationally, and that EIZO-Theatre is now being presented in theatre spaces, it’s only right to juxtapose his work to a few other companies. Here I am thinking of Station House Opera with its use of technological possibilities that have been playing with presence/absence of performers/audience for over two decades or even The Wooster Group who use video to incorporate absent actors into their productions. Finnish contemporary circus company WHS company would also closely align with Okada’s work with their video theatre and visual projects that use screens both with and without live performers.

Okada follows this long lineage of theatre makers, but nevertheless reminds us anew in this pandemic world that theatre is not always about traffic on stage or in this case the screen, but also the world around us. It is always worth refreshing memory, especially for new generations of audiences. Not new, but renewed illusion.

Venue: Oji Shōgekijo

Date attended: 27 August 2022

Note:

In line with my previous blog post on the need to discuss the production realities, I am outlining here some details below from my perspective.

You can see the creative team involved and where they got financial support from if you scroll to the bottom of this page on the company’s website.

Ticket costs:

Ticket (advance sale)

Adult ¥4,000 U29 ¥3,500* U18 ¥1,000* (door ticket +¥500) / about £24/21/6 respectively

This piece is conceived for audience of about 20 people and therefore it was playing 3-4 times a day during a week-long run. Tickets were released in batches, but sold-out quickly. They were difficult to obtain. Initially, I couldn’t get a ticket, but I managed in the end by setting up an alert on the ticketing app. The company also held back a few tickets that were released 2 hours before each performance.