Dramaturgist/director Ota Shogo passed away on the 13th of July. For an artist who was not exactly prolific, 67 is certainly much too young an age to die. In recent years he was teaching at Kinki University and Kyoto University of Art and Design, and died in fact shortly after quitting his position of dean of the latter’s Department of visual and performing arts to return to Tokyo and concentrate on writing. Prior to a similar event in Kyoto, a "Floral tribue and farewell party for Ota Shogo" was held at Tokyo’s Spiral Hall on September 10. Reflecting Ota’s wide-ranged relations in life, the event was attended by guests not only from the realm of theatre, but from literature, art, and others as well. Among those that I recognized were photographer Miyamoto Ryuji, artist Naito Rei, coposer Fujieda Mamoru, and dancer Kim Itoh.
I was quite shocked by the minimal "theatre of silence" when I saw Ota’s most famous piece "The Water Station" for the first time in the 1980s, but it wasn't until the fall of 2006 that I met Ota in person for the first and unfortunately last time. Even though I'm not really a theatre expert, I was asked and agreed to be a judge for the Kyoto Art Center Performing Arts Award 2007 given to young stage directors. Ota, who had been a member of the jury since 2004, and as I thought I'd get in touch with him once before meeting at the following year’s screening meeting, I decided to pay a visit to Theatre Tram to see one of the pieces he directed. It was "One Evening - Old Earth", staged as part of the "Reading Beckett" series.
As I mentioned briefly in Out of Tokyo 150, it was a magnificent yet rather difficult piece. A wash-basin and a white toilet bowl were placed on the rather narrow stage. The lines spoken by Suzuki Rieko in her role of an old woman were so obscure and above that disfluent that their meanings were extremely hard to grasp. Then appeared Kanze Hideo, who performed a piece of Noh dance on an abstract Noh stage (?) Suzuki had made of white threads. A piece containing words without meanings, it was perfectly consistent with Ota’s style (or rather, Ota probably selected the piece in order to emphasize his own characteristic style), and to me it looked like a piece that made use of the original material’s aikido-like energy to create a "situation". Kanze, who was 79 at the time, died last June. The fact that Ota followed him about 40 days later puts me in a complicated kind of mood.
A large number of photographs of Ota’s directed pieces were displayed at the "farewell party" venue. The huge altar made mainly from wild flowers was graced with a photograph of the deceased, and called by staff members "hana no eki" ("flower station") in reference to Ota’s peices "The Water Station", "Chi no Eki" ("earth station") and "Kaze no Eki" ("wind station"). Actor Osugi Ren lifted the glass and held a speech, followed by playwright Betsuyaku Minoru, actor Shinagawa Toru, dancer Yamada Setsuko, and poet Sasaki Mikiro. Osugi, one of Ota’s pupils in the Tenkei Gekijo (Transformational Theater), claimed that, "Without Ota-san I wouldn't have become an actor." Betsuyaku remembered the time when the two of them were judges for the Chikamatsu Monzaemon Award: "When we had to screen well-made entertaining works, and those that were slightly primitive yet very experimental, Ota was consistently supporting the latter." Sasaki emphasized that in his opinion "Ota was one of the most outstanding playwrights. I could communicate well with him, as his vocalubary was that of a poet, including the central element of ’silence'."
After Ota’s death, since August I'be been commuting to Kyoto once every week for examinations of candidates for the above-mentioned "Performing Arts Award". Ota won't be present at the screening meting, award ceremony and public presentation this weekend, but his influence is strongly reflected in the performed works. There are a number of young directors who attempt to create silent, minimal pieces while concentrating his mind on language and acting. Yamaga Setsuko, who followed Ota’s invitation and became his colleague at Kyoto University of Art and Design, explained in her speech that "Ota-san liked his students. He was always keen on 'creating something togeher with them' rather than 'educating them'." Many of those students came from Kyoto to attend the event at Spiral Hall.
Last night, an "event to see off Yamaguchi Sayoko" was held at Tsukiji Hongwanji Temple. While a Buddhist priest was readin sutras, images of a gracefully dancing Yamaguchi were projected onto a screen (I wonder how many dancers exist that one can immediately recognize by their silhouettes…), and attendants quietly paid their floral tribute. Instead of speeches, the sutra reading was followed by a pipe organ performance, which closed with the song "Happy Birthday". It was September 19th, Yamaguchi’s birthday. After that, a video of yamaguchi reciting poems was shown, followed by a "live concert".
The venue was filled with sampled birds' voices and electonic sounds, while the visuals now inccluded next to the dancing silhouette of Yamaguchi also bird-shaped animations. The screening ended when a close-up image of Yamaguchi herself slowly faded out to make way for a huge bird that spread its wings all across the screen before slowly disappearing. I guess this was supposed to mean that Yamaguchi Sayoko became a bird and flew up into the sky. I heard a couple behind me sigh, "Isn't this fantastic!"
The visuals were created by the team of Ikunishi Yasunori and Kakegawa Yasunori, two junior creators who in recent years appeared in events alongside Yamaguchi at Super Deluxe and other venues. Just like it was the case with Ota, the atmosphere here was that of a "giving and receiving" kind of relationship. This was the first time that I thought Ota Shogo and Yamaguchi Sayoko were perhaps quite similar personalities — an idea that would never flash across my mind when both were still alive.
Ozaki Tetsuya / Editor in chief / REALTOKYO