The role of shōtengai: thinking about engagement with theatre makers

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.  

    My neighbourhood is quite compact, and I seem to be the only (white) foreigner. Kansai University is also only a twenty-minute ride away and a few days ago I got my access card so can go there to have some peace to write and research. However, what I’d like to share is that I have fallen in love with Osaka’s shōtengai. These are a sort of shopping arcades, but they are much more than commercial hubs. They are communal spaces where almost everyone knows each other and the place where local festivals are held. Awaji has one such shōtengai and I am already breaking bread with the owner of a bakery.

    Last weekend I went across Osaka’s Yodo River to Nakatsu, for the events organised by the performance unit contact Gonzo. From the station it’s only a short walk to shōtengai in Nakatsu. This one feels quite different to mine as both the main street and side alleys feel narrower. It also feels more artistic. I pass by a record shop called Hawaii Records, then a dark green building with a hair salon called Bunka (meaning culture in Japanese), before making another turn to arrive at the small building housing a gallery/performance space called Pantaloon. It feels very angura (underground) as I find performers rehearsing around a makeshift metal tightrope. This is all too familiar to me, as I have written about contact Gonzo in my master’s dissertation and visited their exhibition in Paris just before the pandemic. The actual space is on two levels and probably can’t hold more than 30-40 people in total.

    One of the performers invites me to have a look at the various artworks on display. Memories of an overnight trip to Paris on cold February evening are coming back to me. Quite a contrast to humidity here. Later that evening, the unit will perform one of their works, but I won’t be discussing it here as I am saving it for another publication. As I still have some time before the performance starts, I decide to check another site nearby where they work. The unit is leaving the area and moving to the southern parts of Osaka, so this and next weekend, they are archiving and celebrating their career to date. This other venue is even smaller. I can only reach the top floor by climbing ladder/stairs and crawling. Here the main exhibit shows twelve used colour-stained t-shirts. The caption on the wall displays contact Gonzo 2008-2012. As contact Gonzo notes on Twitter these are T-shirts that dye when you sweat and were developed by a former member of the group, Hisuromu. These are surrounded by various anecdotes from the contact Gonzo’s past work and experiences around the world. After looking around, I return to Pantaloon. As expected, there are not many of us in the audience neither on the first or the second day, but the space is filed, and children are running around. Everyone seems to be very relaxed and theatre formalities are almost dispensed with. After the performance in the main gallery, I briefly connect with Yuya Tsukahara who is now also one of the three artistic directors of Kyoto Experiment that I’ll be attending in October. He is interested in the fact that I wrote about them in my masters. He gives me some more research material. Japanese performance and theatre makers seemed to be very keen to connect with scholars. I return home passing through both Nakatsu’s and Awaji’s shōtengai.

    The second day I attend the Avalanche festival. This is the fifth edition of the festival that started in 2021 and is held every few months. The entry fee of 1000 yen (about £6) is collected in a wooden box by one of the members who thanks each audience member individually (the same as the day before). For the next two hours, I watch contact Gonzo members performing as well as some other artists they invited. The premise of the festival is to present unfinished, unrehearsed works of 5-20 minutes in duration. The order of performances is decided by one audience member throwing the paper from the top floor. There is a lot of audience interaction too. The most memorable one is perhaps when they invite audience members and some performers to write kanji characters with their toes, a project conceived by Sakamoto-san. The members of contact Gonzo have also decided to play a game within a game. When they are called to perform, they each draw a paper out of plastic bag describing a performance they have to do for us or with us. I participate in one of these when Matsumi-san selects me along with four or five other audience members to tie him with ropes and see how quickly he can untie. He does it very quickly, but it doesn’t matter.

    It’s all fun, but I am constantly thinking about how closely these artists relate to their communities, how integrated they are. It also makes me wonder how contemporary theatre and performance scholars are often disconnected from the artists and theatre makers they are writing about. In the past year or two, I have seen this disconnect all too often at academic conferences, something which becomes most evident in Q&A sessions following the presentations. It is important that we know how work is being rehearsed, produced and funded and incorporate this into our academic writing. Of course, this requires effort and time to meet and engage with theatre makers. It also requires access to research funding, which is not easy these days, but we must continue advocating for it. It also requires collaboration between theatre scholars themselves. I feel that in doing so, we will be better equipped to show the lasting impact of our research. In that way, our role could also become close to that of a shōtengai.