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DTSTART;TZID=Asia/Kuala_Lumpur:20060629T203000
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SUMMARY:"Tokyo Notes" by Seinendan Theatre Company
DESCRIPTION:[vc_row][vc_column width="1/6"][/vc_column][vc_column width="2/3"][vc_column_text]\nThe Japan Foundation\, Kuala Lumpur and Kuala Lumpur Performing Arts Centre (KLPac)\, sponsored by Vistana Hotel proudly present “Tokyo Notes” (東京ノート)\, a piece that was written and directed by Oriza Hirata (平田オリザ) and performed by Seinendan Theatre Company (青年団) here in Kuala Lumpur. The performance will be in Japanese with English and Malay subtitles.\n “Tokyo Notes” is Hirata’s awarded piece at the 39th Kishida Kunio Drama Award\, the most important and prestigious award for Japanese playwrights\, in 1995. The piece has been translated into 7 languages including Chinese\, English\, French\, German\, Italian\, Korean and Thai\, and has been performed in 12 cities in 9 countries.\nHirata proposed the “contemporary colloquial theatre theory”\, has drawn much attention in the 1990s and has had a great influence on the Japanese theater. This theatre theory practice in Hirata’s work\, which the actors sometimes speak with their backs to the audience and several people talk at the same time so that conversations overlap just as often happens in real life\, and he never uses any music to heighten theatrical effects. According to Hirata he\, “rejects advocating any theatrical ‘ism’ and aims for a theatre that is a direct portrayal of the world.”\nNow this internationally acclaimed piece will tour Bangkok and Jakarta as well as Kuala Lumpur in June and July.\n“Tokyo Notes” (with English and Malay subtitles):\nDate & Time:\n29 (Thu) June 2006 – 1 (Sat) July 2006 @ 8:30pm\n2 (Sun) July 2006 @ 3pm\nVenue:\nPentas 2\, Kuala Lumpur Performing Arts Centre (KLPac)\nSentul Park\, Jalan Strachan\, off Jalan Ipoh\nTicket:\nRM30\, RM15 (Students\, Senior Citizens & JFKL members)\navailable at: KLPac box office 03-4047 9000\nThe Actors Studio Bangsar box office 03-2094 9400\nFor further enquiry\, please contact:\nThe Japan Foundation\, Kuala Lumpur\nTel: 03-2161 2104\nEmail: jpcc@jfkl.org.my\nClick here to view the schedule of Playwright workshop by Oriza Hirata.\n\nTokyo Notes\nAbout the Piece\nPremiered in 1994\, “Tokyo Notes\,” one of the most renowned works of Oriza Hirata and Seinendan\, depicts the gradual dissolution of family and human relations in the modern society and is highly acclaimed both in Japan and abroad.\n\n\nIn 1995 Hirata won the 39th Kishida Kunio Drama Award with this piece and Seinendan has been presenting “Tokyo Notes” in various theaters and art museums in Japan and in 12 cities in 9 other countries. It has been translated into 7 languages so far.Non-Seinendan presentations include a 2-month tour production in France by a cast of French actors directed jointly by Frederic Fisbach and Oriza Hirata\, which came about as the result of a well-received drama reading of the play in a 1998 FIFA World Cup-related event when it was selected as the contemporary drama to represent Japan. In 2003\, a Koreantheater company did a long run of “Seoul Notes\,” an adaptation\, in Seoul. “Seoul Notes” was presented again successfully in 2004 as a Japan-Korea collaboration.\n\n\nSynopsis\nThe story takes place in the lobby of an art museum in the near future.\nA major war is being waged in Europe. In front of the paintings evacuated from the war-torn areas\, the visiting Japanese family members\, friends and lovers endlessly continue fragmentary conversations about taking care of ageing parents\, their future careers\, love\, inheritance and whatnot.\nAgainst the huge backdrop of war\, it scrupulously portrays the Japanese people living their ordinary everyday lives\, revealing a whole range of problems and crises of the modern society.\nOn “Tokyo Notes”\nAs its title implies\, I got an idea for “Tokyo Notes” from Yasujiro Ozu’s (小津安二郎) masterpiece “Tokyo Monogatari / 東京物語 (Tokyo Story).” Where in Ozu’s film the old parents visiting their children in Tokyo are delineated scene after scene\, “Tokyo Notes” depicts the siblings\, now living separately in Tokyo\, gathering in the lobby of an art museum in Tokyo when their art-loving sister living in their hometown comes to visit. Naturally\, each of them has his/her own life and pains but now their only common interest is who takes care of the parents. As another background\, it is suggested that a major war is going on far away in Europe. But the people gathered here look so unrelated to the great global shift\, concerned only about their own lives and problems.\nIf theater is a device to depict the vibrations of human minds\, this piece may have been an attempt to reveal the minutest of such vibrations. I hope to present to the audience what vibrates quietly in the double chaos of the enormous conflict between nations and that in a family\, the smallest unit of people.in the 90’s.\n— Oriza Hirata\nSeinendan青年団\nSeinendan (direct translated as Youth Group) was founded in 1983. It has been a most up-front theater company with the Komaba Agora Theater as its home base. The actors never stopped evolving. The “contemporary colloquial theater theory” proposed by Oriza Hirata (artistic director and playwright) and the innovative theatrical style Seinendan has developed to put the theory into practice and it has drawn much attention in 1990s. They have great influences on the younger generation of the theater community.\nHirata claims that modern theater in Japan which started out by importing the Western modern theater has also lead to playwriting governed by the Western logic. Thus\, he believes\, writing styles and logical structures irrelevant to the Japanese language have been routinely practiced\, and in trying to give those irrelevant styles reality the actors have been forced into distorted acting styles too. This is the heart of Hirata’s criticism of the conventional Japanese theater.\nInstead of ostentatious ideas and tricks\, Seinendan chooses a clear and firm theory to create the productions in order to establish a new expression that can alter the framework of theater itself.\nContemporary Colloquial Theatre 現代口語演劇\nHirata’s “contemporary colloquial theater” has drawn much attention in the 1990s and has had a great influence on the Japanese theater. Our daily life is not a continuous string of grande passions and murders — big events conventional theater has eagerly portrayed. Instead\, the main portion of life is filled with quiet and uneventful times. Hirata often uses such quiet times for his theatrical works. The existence of people is essentially amazing and dramatic. Life itself is merry\, graceful\, funny\, stupid\, complicated and fertile by nature. The actors try to abstract and then reconstruct the diverse elements and present the quiet life directly on stage.\nSeinendan URL: http://www.seinendan.org\n \nOriza Hirata平田オリザ\nHe is playwright\, director\, leader of Seinendan\, and artistic director of Komaba Agora Theater. Born in Tokyo in 1962. Graduated from International Christian University\, College of Liberal Arts\, Humanities Division.\nIn 1995\, he won the 39th Kishida Kunio Drama Award with “Tokyo Note (Tokyo Notes)”. In 1998\, he received the 5th Yomiuri Theater Award Outstanding Director Award\, for his production of “Tsuki no Misaki (The Cape of the Moon)”\, a play written by Masataka Matsuda.\nHirata wrote and directed “Ueno Dobutsuen Sai-sai-sai Shugeki (Attacking Ueno Zoo for the Fourth Time)” in 2002 and won the Yomiuri Theater Award for Outstanding Production. In 2002\, he won AICT (Association Internationale des Critiques des Theatre) Critique Award for his book “Geijutu Rikkokuron (Arts as the Basis of a Nation)” published from Shueisha.\nIn 2003\, he won the Grand Prix of the 2nd Asahi Performing Arts Awards with “Sono Kawa wo Koete\, Gogatsu (Across the River in May)”\, which was an event for the Year of Japan-ROK (Republic of Korea) National Exchange in 2002.\nAt present\, he is Professor of Osaka University Centre for the study of Communication-Design\, artistic director of Fujimi Culture Hall KIRARI FUJIMI. He is also Japanese Textbooks Editorial Board member of Sanseido Publishing Company\, board member of the Japan Foundation for Regional Art-Activities\, the Japan Performing Arts Foundation\, the Japanese Society for Theatre research\, and the Japan-Korea Arts Exchange advisor for the Agency for Cultural Affairs.\nOriza Hirata is one of the key figures in the contemporary theater scene in Japan.\nHis thinking and direction\nQuoted from ‘Half a Century of Japanese Theatre’\, by Senda Akihiko\nBeginning with the performance of City of Light (Hikari no miyako) in 1988\, Hirata began directing all his own plays. At the same time came the birth of the characteristic Seinendan performance style.\nIn Tokyo of the 1980s\, troupes headed by Hideki Noda (now leader of NODA MAP) and Shoji Kokami\, were riding a wave of popularity among young audiences with a richly frenetic\, highly paced style of performance. The main impression of their pieces was one of exaggerated comical presentation. This reflected Japan’s strong economic vigor in what is known as the “bubble economy” of the 1980s.\nHirata moved against that tide and strove to regain a feeling of theatrical realism both performatively and directorially. He was attempting to achieve thoroughness in performance that went beyond so-called realism. The actors of the Seinendan reject any stagey vocal method actions and at times speak in such a natural and off-hand manner that their voice is too low for the audience to hear. The actors sometimes speak with their backs to the audience and several people talk at the same time so that conversations overlap just as often happens in real life. Furthermore\, in his staging Hirata never uses any music to heighten theatrical effects.\nIn his direction\, Hirata takes great care to exclude his own opinions and subjectivity. According to Hirata he\, “rejects advocating any theatrical ‘ism’ and aims for a theatre that is a direct portrayal of the world.” In his theatrical world things are not spoken of frankly\, but he says\, “statements take an indirect form as often as possible.”\nTherefore\, in Hirata’s plays\, even if an actor is sad in a certain scene\, “sadness” is not expressed directly. Hirata says that\, ‘the relative sadness of something is quite vague and cannot be expressed by the actor.” Displays of emotion are avoided\, and what foreigners sometimes see as inexpressive Japanese behavior\, is included in a minutely realistic acting method.\n… The term “quite theatre” came into popular use among journalists in Japan in the 1990s. This was theatre which was a reaction to the frenetic style that had gained so much popularity during the 1980s. The term was used to refer to playwrights such as Oriza Hirata\, Ryo Iwamatsu and Akio Miyazawa. Hirata can be seen as the most representative of that group.\n [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width="1/6"][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css=".vc_custom_1655867857498{margin-bottom: 50px !important;}"][vc_column][vc_column_text]Reviews\n“The effect of the Japanese playwright Oriza Hirata’s dialogue can be as transfixing as a glimpse of human tissue under a microscope.”\nPamela Renner\, The New York Times\n\n“On the surface\, he seems to eliminate everything that is theatrical. However\, a closer look would reveal that Hirata grasps the vital points of theater\, namely ‘to vigorously present the state of the world’ and ‘to precisely and exquisitely present the state of people’s minds.’”\nHisashi Inoue\, ‘Comments Upon Selection of the 39th Kishida Kunio Drama Award’\, February\, 1995\n\n“Hirata’s method intends to liberate theater from the convention that a drama is destined to express some kind of conclusion and therefore it should converge and integrate toward that conclusion”.\nMinoru Betsuyaku\, ‘Comments Upon Selection of the 39th Kishida Kunio Drama Award’\, February\, 1995\n\nSet in the lounge of an art museum\, this piece consists of the conversations of visitors and staff members. … They ramble on randomly about love\, marriage\, family\, future\, etc.\nLow voices\, lines spoken simultaneously\, and movements irrelative to the meaning of the conversation made me feel indescribably uncomfortable. But at the end\, this distorted picture with no proper perspective comes to produce a distinct image.\nSisters-in-law playing an outstaring game that you lose when you burst into tears\, unlike the traditional kids’ game in which you lose when you burst into laughter. This scene portrays us living in today’s world bewildered by not knowing how much distance we should keep from others. This piece captured and presented a dramatic moment on stage not by the dynamism of the story but by depicting the weakened relationships of people.\nHiroshi Sugiyama\, ‘Depicting Contemporary People through Conversations’\, Yomiuri Shimbun Evening Edition\, May 31\, 1994\n\nOriza Hirata chose an art museum in the near future in 2004 as the crossing of people. Various groups are making conversation in the lobby. Listening intensively\, we see that war is going on overseas.\n…\nThe cause or the situation of the war is not told directly. It is left to the audience to connect bits and pieces of information. The war overseas casts a dark shadow on the mind.\nThis play\, first performed in 1994\, has pictured fully the mental situations of the Japanese looking at the Gulf War and the Bosnian Conflict through the mass media. Turning on TV\, we see waterfowls whose wings are covered by crude oil flowed. Yet we can’t get away from love\, marriage\, and aging problem that urge us.\nHiroshi Hasebe\, from ‘Styles of Lines’\, Nikkei Shimbun (newspaper)\, January 24\, 1994\n\nAs discussed on stage in relation to Vermeer’s paintings\, the conversations show “only where the light strikes” but this stage also suggests subtly the hidden parts of people where the light doesn’t strike. Especially the last scene where the elder sister and the second brother’s wife play an outstaring game holding back the tears comes home.\nBesides\, this imaginary early 21st century world is a shocking one. In this near future world\, Europe is at war\, refugees are flowing into Japan\, Japan is involved in the war and the conscription is about to put to practice. This lightly depicted world on stage which contains an apocalyptic world sealed in it is strangely tensive.\nThe everyday-life-reality-oriented acting of the small theater actors is effective.\nAkihiko Senda\, from ‘Lightly Expressed Apocalyptic World Gives Tension’\, Asahi Shimbun (newspaper)\, May 25\, 1994\n [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]\n
URL:https://www.jfkl.org.my/events/tokyo-notes-by-seinendan-theatre-company/
CATEGORIES:Performing Arts
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