Notes from rehearsal room: Re-thinking writing on the stage?

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.

    I arrive completely jet-lagged in front of the grey black-box building with a façade resembling the dropped curtain. I stop for a moment to study the contours of the theatre building and how it’s squeezed in-between two buildings. Snack shop selling koppépan to the right and stairs leading to the black box theatre to the left. I climb up to the second floor where the small rehearsal room is located. I find Yuta, the director and the performers Honami and Shin in the middle of a conversation. We greet and I sit among them at the table. The table is filled with post-its while the rehearsal space is surrounded by whiteboards with lots of things written on them. The company is currently in the initial research phase for their new production on the Nanjing Massacre. Over the last two weeks or so, they have been interviewing Chinese exchange students in both Chinese and English (whiteboard writing) as well as doing bodywork. **

    It is a very interesting devising/research process. They continue discussion about how to think theatrically about Nanjing. I am drawn to a torn-up page from Honami’s notebook which shows the body of a performer in three different postures. Their aesthetic seems to embody both textuality and physicality. Yuta confirms this to me later and I get to see it for myself over the course of three hours. At one point they include me in the discussion by asking questions about how Nanjing Massacre is perceived in Europe. In Croatia, at least in my school days there, this is not really taught in history classes although we do learn about Japanese militaristic and imperialistic aspirations. It was not until I started my undergraduate degree in the UK that I learned about Nanjing Massacre in the first-year Japanese Studies class entitled Rethinking Japan. It is an important moment in the world history which should not be forgotten. Thinking about it after the meeting with the company, it is a paradoxical moment of history in which a member of Nazi Party tried to stop war crimes.

    They continue the discussion amongst themselves for a bit longer, then, at one point Yuta suggests they get up on their feet and do a bit of bodywork. Shin starts with an idea of matsuri (festival). In many Japanese festivals men carry floats and stomp with their feet. Shin also notes that to a casual onlooker, foreigner, this can feel quite scary, almost militaristic. The trio – Yuta, Honami and Shin try a few movements based on this. Once finished, they ask me what I think about it. Although I have never thought of matsuri as war-like, I find myself suddenly questioning this idea of matsuri as something peaceful and joyous. I am reminded of Nobel-Prize winning author Elfriede Jelinek when she said that ‘sport is war in peacetime’. Could we then conceive matsuri as a form of sport? I share this thinking with them. Jelinek did later qualify this in one of the interviews stating that sport can be a political tool causing both war and peace. We also discuss the idea of stomping of feet as a metaphor for bombs. They try some more movements.

    As they finish, we all gather around the table again. Yuta distributes two poems, which I later find out, are by one of the most important Japanese poets of younger generation Sayaka Osaki. It is from her 2018 collection entitled Atarashii Sumika (New Habitat). Honami reads out Mokutō (Silent Prayer). Having heard her voice in Kamome Machine’s denwa engeki (telephone theatre) series and watched her powerful, yet harrowing performance in Oregayo (untranslatable), I can sense how she controls her voice so well. The poem seems fitting in the context of former Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda’s paying silent tribute to the victims of Nanjing.

    Later in the week, I read an article by Kenta Awaru on the rituals of silence. I don’t necessarily agree with the article’s conclusion as it seems to me yet another mythologising (mystifying) of the ritual. However, I learn that silent prayer is, as non-religious practice to commemorate the dead in the war, a modern Western invention. This modern practice also borrows from the Quakers and, of course, the British have institutionalised it by a way of South Africa post-World War I. The Japanese imperial family copied this form of non-religious prayer from the British and used it for militaristic purposes. Shin reads the second poem Suihanki (Rice Cooker). He brings a different voice quality, slightly shaky, but also compelling. Not sure if they both read the poems before, but the sound of Japanese poetry is pleasing. In the discussion following the reading, you can tell Shin has clearly been accumulating a lot of thoughts about it. At least, that’s my impression.

    The company makes plans for the public sharing of their workshop research that it is due to take place over the weekend and then we go for a meal together at a local restaurant. There we discuss theatre in Japan and the UK; Toyooka Festival programme, Kyoto Experiment programme, Katie Mitchel, Sarah Kane, Forced Entertainment… We talk of difficulties working on the margins. However, I am most enchanted with their way of working, their re-thinking of écriture du plateau***, how they navigate from history to performer’s body and then to poetry and literature. Privately, I also reflect on the company’s playing with listening in theatre. Thinking about aurality as a theatre-making method is something that I find innovative in their practice. Aurality in theatre is not new per se, but the way they go about it is fresh, re-inventing it with each new production. I am not sure if they see that as their method.

    Such encounters are important for my development as a contemporary Japanese theatre scholar. Yuta later sends me an email to say that they always work by inviting other people to rehearsal rooms to exchange. On the train back to my hotel, I remember that I came across Sayaka Osaki’s poems before, via studying her collaboration with Yudai Kamisato in the early 2010s. I think she was still relatively unknown then. Later in the week I reply to Yuta asking to meet again to exchange more.

*International Federation for Theatre Research

** In an email exchange later, Yuta Hagiwara tells me that the interviews were only in Japanese as he doesn’t understand neither Chinese nor English. He also thinks that the reading of the poems was the other way round.

*** writing on the stage