ART LIVES TORIDE Where Art Is Born

I am from a small town called Nishiaizu-cho in Fukushima Prefecture, where the theater troupe Kazenoko came to give a tour. When I was in the fourth grade, I went to see it and that was my first encounter with the theater. Actually, the day before that, a friend of mine who was one year younger than me died suddenly. To be honest, I thought I would hate going to see a play. However, when I saw the play, I felt something like I was going to be saved. I realized that theater is something that can move you even when you are going through a difficult time like this.

I did a play at the junior high school festival and joined the drama club in high school. I came to Ibaraki for college, and there was a theater company based in the area where the university was located, so I started to come and go. After graduation, I officially joined the troupe and have been a member for about four years. Sometimes I am not only an actor but also on the staff side, I go to the rehearsal hall all the time even though I am not performing. I work part-time during the day and practice theater at night. My priority in life was to create works of art rather than to make a living. Since seeing plays is part of my job, I would sometimes go to Tokyo, but it was not easy because of the cost of tickets and transportation.

Theater is a temporal art form that disappears in the moment, so I often wondered what completion meant, and what it meant to be satisfied. It is great to have a play that is consistently the same every day, but I think it is good to have improvisation while having sessions, and to have different parts every day. Even if my play is well done, there may be accidents in other parts of the play.The whole thing came together nicely, but is it too organized? Is this really what you want? I sometimes wonder if it is really the right thing to do. I would like to explore what is best for me, for the people I work with, and for the viewers.

I quit my theater company in November 2019 and moved to Toride to change my environment. The rent is cheap and there is Tokyo University of the Arts, so I was wondering if there are people doing various activities. Now I am thinking of continuing my activities as a one-person unit without joining a new theater company. I have to organize and manage my own time, but that gives me the freedom to go where I want to go when I want to go. I have been working in my hometown of Fukushima, and recently I went to Owase city in Mie prefecture.

To be honest, I am anxious. When I left the theater company, people around me asked me what I could do on my own. When it comes to creating a production, it costs a lot of money to hire actors and staff. I am not sure if I can really continue, and I have to think about my strategy, but I feel like I have no choice but to go on. I often think about going down a different path. Sometimes I wonder if I will ever be able to do it again, but I still want to do theater because through theater, I believe that I can convey a message to those who will live in the future. I experienced the impact that performance, including theater, has on people when I was in elementary school. I kind of believe in that.

I am now thinking about how to communicate with the audience while performing a one-man show. I recently created a one-man show called “Takase-bune. I projected real-time images of the performance in the background and performed in front of it. I wanted the viewer to be able to move freely between the two worlds by seeing myself in the theater and another point of view projected by the video. I wanted the work itself to be a kind of cross between the two. I think there are people doing this kind of thing as performance art, but I am beginning to think that there is potential in doing it as theater.

I haven’t been able to work on any piece since I came to Toride. Since I don’t know anything about Toride yet, I would like to start by learning about the town’s history and what kind of place it used to be by listening to stories and researching its history. I often perform in vacant houses or spaces that are available rather than in theaters, so I would be happy to learn about places I can use. I am also interested in farming while doing theater for my living. There are still many things I would like to do in Toride.