"That sounds interesting indeed. But isn't it impossible to see all shows?" For a moment I was at a loss for an answer on this remark. This conversation took place at a bar after watching Ameya Norimizu’s rendition of the piece "Sannin iru!" My talk partner was a friend and theatre expert, himself a stage director as well.

 

Written by Tada Junnosuke, "Sannin iru!" is an intricate piece that tells a magnificent story about something I would call "parallel identity" (as opposed to "parallel worlds"). Character A is in his/her room, when a different character, A', enters the same room and asks surprised, "What are you doing in my room?" A is of course no less surprised, and what makes everything additionally odd is the fact that both A and A' have the same name, and even their recollections of events in the near and distant past are identical. The two protagonists eventually decide to consult a friend, B, to find a solution, but when they arrive at B’s place, B sees only one person instead of two. To make things even worse, B tells them about a complete stranger, B', who came into his/her room and asked what he/she was doing there just a minute ago. But A (and A') see(s) only one person there…

 

I haven't seen the original performance by Tada’s own company, Tokyo Deathlock, but I heard that, just like in the version Ameya directed, the cast of the original version was made up of three actors, who played three of the four characters - A, A', B and B' - in each scene. Or better, it happened that A turned into B', or B became A within a single scene. The identity-less vessels that are the bodies of actors were successively charged with multiple identities as the situation demanded.

 

Ameya added to that the audacious trick of having different actors each day. As the piece was shown on twelve days, there were a total of 36 actors performing. There were two shows every day (noon and evening), which makes a total of 24 shows. As a matter of course, the actors couldn't all practice together, so rehearsals were done separately. There are double or triple casts from time to time, but at least in my case, a cast format called "duodecuple" (sic!) is something I had never heard of.

 

What’s more, most of the actors were reportedly "people without stage experience". Ameya had worked out different arrangements for each of the twelve sets of actors, and the stage designs changed as well. For example, the first show that I caught (on August 7) starred Kunitake Aya, Sano Yuka and Shibata Takayuki, who performed against the backdrop of a large projected image of the moon. I saw the piece again on August 9, when the actors were Hatanaka Kento, Yasuda Yuto and Chun Yi. Perhaps inspired by Chun Yi’s Mongolian descent, the stage was decorated with a portrait of Genghis Khan. On August 10 the piece was performed by Fujiwara Mikan, Kim Eunjin and Watanabe Kohei. Kim Eunjin, a Korean student in Japan, was eating kimchi (Korean pickles) on stage.

 

In addition to different lighting, sets and stage props, the actors added lines to Tada’s original script that reflected their respective origins and backgrounds. In different dialogues in each of the twelve performances, the piece’s central issue of "identity" was discussed with additional emphasis particularly in cases when the cast included foreign or homosexual actors. In the three performances I saw, the casts were mixed, but it also happened that the piece was performed by male or female actors only. On one day, Ameya reportedly showed a "bleeding performance" between acts, so every day the audience witnessed a completely different spectacle come and go.

 

After watching the piece three times, I told everybody about it in excitement, until I got the above-mentioned levelheaded feedback from a friend. Ticket prices apart, it’s certainly next to impossible to catch all performances unless you have so much free time that you don't know what to do with it. All shows were sold-out, and since 60 tickets were available for each of the 24 performances, the total number of spectators amounted to somewhere between 1,400 and 1,500. Now I wonder how many of them managed to see all twelve versions of the piece (let alone all 24 individual renditions). Considering that this is virtually impossible, one might suspect that Ameya came up with these twelve arrangements purely for indulgence’s sake.

 

Such rather bitter ideas that I sensed in my friend’s calm talk instantly startled me and made me reflect on the meaning of Ameya’s attempt continuously to this day. As mentioned above, there are theatre plays with double or triple casts, as well as masterpieces of kabuki, bunraku, opera or even cinema that are being remade/restaged with different lineups of actors, but in this case there’s one crucial difference. The claim that "every single stage performance has to be treasured as a piece in itself that is perfectly unique even if performed several times with the same cast" is absolutely justified, but in our case that’s not the question to begin with.

 

In a nutshell, Ameya decided to create and stage a uniquely singular one-off play by interlinking the characteristic notion of "uniqueness" of theatre with his piece’s central theme of "identity", while appreciating each actor’s (and his own) "singularity". It is easy to dismiss the idea as the director’s own "indulgence", but first of all I'd like to point out that, in principle, it is not totally impossible to see all performances. Different from the case of parallel worlds, Ameya’s twelve pieces are happening in THIS world. Furthermore, it is also possible for us to imagine "the existence of twelve different pieces".

 

In addition, by watching another version of the piece, the understanding of it deepens not arithmetically but geometrically. In other words, it is not a matter of addition or multiplication, but here it is in a way squared, cubed, etc. Seeing the show three times, as I did, means that it was cubed and not just multiplied by three. One understands each actor’s involvement in the play based on his/her own experience better when watching it twice rather than just once, and even better when watching it three times, and by comparing the performances with each other, I felt that the director’s intention gradually crystallized.

 

Even if it’s difficult to see all twelve performances, catching three or four should be no problem. Doing so helps deepen one’s understanding of the piece, and make it several times more fun. My conclusion for now is that I sincerely hope the piece will be staged again, and if it happens, I definitely recommend watching it several times. Even if all shows are sold-out, it will surely not result in a surplus that exceeds the organizers' and involved creators' efforts. In case there is a "next time", I for one will definitely try to catch all shows, and not only three.