The performances of Crack Iron Albatrossket are often described with such expressions as "offbeat", "absurd", or "modern show tent spectacle". It’s indeed difficult to put the unique fascination of your art into words.

Errr, yeah, sorry for that… (grins)

Anyway, there is a special kind of mixture of language, physical expression and sense of time that distinguishes your pieces from those that only work with nonsense and situation comedy. In the realm of sports, that would be the excitement of a game without a particular scheme, as opposed to something like golf where you follow a fixed course. As a leader, author, performer and co-director together with Ushijima Misawo, please tell us how the average Crack Iron piece comes together.

Photographs: Numata Manabu

I guess that’s the usual way - I always carry a notebook with me so I can write down as soon as I have an idea for a plot, like, "If he did something like this in that kind of situation, that would be funny!" Such notes serve as raw sketches that we refine later, determining exactly where the actors stand and what they do.

The resulting mixture of weird language, movements and dance is so to the point that I just can't get enough of it!

Oh, thank you! That must be because we're working it all out really carefully, even the passages that are seemingly improvised. We tell the actors exactly how many seconds they have to wait before tumbling over, for example. This actually makes it easier also for the other members as we don't drag them into discussions about the complex "inner workings" of a character. (laughs) Also, we often implement funny movements that we stumble across coincidentally during rehearsals.

You and Ushijima seem to be working perfectly hand in hand in this respect, which is where I suppose the unique, non-Euclidean geometry sort of Crack Iron logic emerges from…

There are definitely points on which we agree in terms of what goes and what doesn't. For example, what never goes is a scene in which we try out something in front of the audience, and it comes across with a taste of "so, what d'ya think?" In cases where we can't get rid of that, we sometimes scrap the entire scene, or just have a bucket fall down and that’s that.

From small talk to big poetry

What is it that usually stimulates and inspires you?

In terms of totally empty everyday conversation, for example, the extreme habits of junior high school students are interesting. It’s an age when kids tend to spice up their off-the-wall interactions with the coolest expressions they can come up with, and that silly swirl I find quite fascinating. (laughs)

I see. The other day it happened that I caught an SMS message a young man standing next to me in a jam-packed subway train sent to his darling. It was something like, "I'm on my way home honey (+pictogram)", and after he sent it off there was a photo of the young couple appearing on his cell phone’s display. I felt so bad for peeping into my neighbor’s private affairs that I got really depressed.

Conversations like that are all over the place these days, and if our brains were able to catch the electrical waves of all those SMS messages, I suppose we'd all be going totally mad. It’s quite a scary idea. But even though there is certainly a variety of important information, in the case of Crack Iron I don't think that’s mirrored in our writing. What’s more essential to us is the question for the driving power that makes people like certain things.

In the Little More shows last May you offered everything from your trademark short performance attacks to longer pieces and even those featuring music. On the other hand, it seems to me as if the delicious egg called Crack Iron was separated into white and yolk. The egg probably tastes best when you mix it all together (laughs), and in this sense I'm particularly looking forward to your upcoming (at the point of the interview) performances at The Suzunari on 7/3-6, starring a large number of Crack Iron members in addition to guest dancers Yasumoto Masako and Furusawa Yusuke (Gokiburi Combinat).

It’s fun to do performances with just a few actors, but you're right, it’s more exciting with a big bunch of people on stage.

One thing I always find amazing in your performances is the great music - both what you use and how you use it. Are you responsible for that as well? I remember hearing Roland Kirk in your last piece. Awesome selection, really…

When it comes to music, I'm turning into some sort of DJ, as I'm always eager to play my audience something extraordinary. It happens that students come to me after the show and ask what that music was. (laughs)

We are only in it for…!?

Come to think of it, there’s certainly something "Zappa-esque" in your performances. (laughs) I guess that’s just like ARICA *), for example, are (or at least want to be) a bit like Caetano Veloso. Anyway, one person I actually wanted to talk about is Richard Foreman. The annual performances he’s been doing at New York’s St. Mark’s Church are fantastic. Foreman himself is responsible for the sound, and his fans come from the fields of music and performing arts alike. It’s perhaps a bit misleading to talk about things that he and you have in common, but I think you should definitely go and see one of his shows.

Oh yes, I'd love to! It would be wonderful if we could continue as a "troupe that can make some good music" as well! Actually I just bought Zappa’s "We are only in it for the money" album today. Boy are there weird titles on there! "Nasal Retentive Calliope Music"… Now that’s a title I'd love to steal for one of my own shows! (laughs)

As a novelist, you've been contributing texts to "Shincho" magazine recently. Can we expect some more writing in the future?

There'll be another one in the next issue of "Monkey Business" magazine (out August 20) as well. Once the Crack Iron performances in August are done I'm going to do some writing again. When working on the Monkey Business one, I suddenly felt like borrowing some lyrics from Dylan’s "All Along The Watchtower", but I couldn't find a good Japanese translation. Then I remembered that Shibata Motoyuki (the magazine’s editor-in-chief) was actually a translator, and ended up asking him to translate the lyrics for me. Writing novels and doing Crack Iron each takes place in totally different parts of my brain.

I'm very much looking forward to seeing what you will come up with next! Finally, please tell me about your own image of Tokyo?

The place I was born. Not central Tokyo, but the Musashino/Tamagawa region.