It happened. A whole month has passed without me posting any reviews on this blog 😐 The good side of all this is that I did see some very good performances in October – it is only the lack of time that didn’t allow me to write about them. And the other good side (!) is that there will definitely come a time for me to post those reviews. I promise it will be worth your while reading them, so stay tuned 🙂
In the meantime let’s see what the Tokyo stages have in store for November.
Festival/Tokyo, which is THE theatre event of the second half of this year, will be starting on November 9th with a program that promises to keep audiences enraptured. The theme of this year’s edition is “Travels in narratives”, giving us the opportunity to think on stories, on what they mean to us, how they change in time and how they transform us, helping us grow. Any place in the world has stories connected to it and theatre is one medium by which those stories can come to the surface. How will the city look like after its stories will be released from the veil of forgetfulness and will take over the quotidian for some time? It’s just a guess, but we will probably witness a transfiguration of the city through the stories that sleep underneath it – this is what I would call the highlight of this year’s Festival/Tokyo.
For a selection of works that I recommend heartily, please refer to this article on F/T 2013 that I wrote previously. Personally, I’m looking forward not only to the performances themselves, but also to the open events, symposia and talk events, which give us the rare opportunity to hear the artists talk about their works. In other words, I’m seriously considering moving my headquarters to Ikebukuro this month. Too bad that the Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre doesn’t allow sleeping in, ha ha ha… 🙂
From the last performances of BeSeTo Festival, which is still going on until November 10th, “Forge/Natsume Sōseki” 『偽造/夏目漱石』of theatre company Jūryoku/Note 重力/Note is worth checking out. Jūryoku/Note’s trademark is the original adaptation for the stage of texts written by established authors. In the past they dealt with Terayama Shūji’s texts in “My job – Terayama Shūji (1935-1983/1983-2012)” or with Elfriede Jelinek’s “Cloud.House.”, a work presented at Festival/Tokyo last year. This time they are turning to a classical figure of Japanese literature, Natsume Sōseki. It will be interesting to see how director Kashima Nobusuke’s special concern towards the text collaborates with the company’s latest experiments with theatrical space in order to project the figure of Natsume Sōseki into our times. “Forge/Natsume Sōseki” will be running from November 4th through 10th at Atelier Shunpusha.
As far as the noh stage is concerned, there will be a rare performance of Ikari kazuki 『碇潜』by the noh study association Tessenkai 銕仙会 at Hōshō nōgaku-dō on November 8th. Ikari kazuki is a play inspired by The Tale of the Heike, focusing on the battle at Dan no ura, where many warriors from both sides, the Taira and the Minamoto clans, have lost their lives. In order to reenact the battle, three boats will be brought on the stage – a rare sight in the case of noh, whose restrained use of props is well known. A performance of noh Makiginu 『巻絹』and kyōgen Kane no ne 『鐘の音』are also in the program.
Whatever your choice, it is my hope that you’ll enjoy the festive atmosphere of this month with some good theatre 🙂