VIE Scena Contemporanea Festival - The Sonic Life of A Giant Tortoise

The Sonic Life of A Giant Tortoise

Toshiki Okada

18/10/2011 , 21:00
19/10/2011 , 19:00

Text and direction Toshiki Okada
Performers Taichi Yamagata, Shoko Matsumura, Tomomitsu Adachi, Riki Takeda, Yukiko Sasaki
Stage director Koro Suzuki
Set designer Torafu Architects Inc.
Lighting designer Tomomi Ohira
Sound director Norimasa Ushikawa
Video Takaki Sudo
Producer Akane Nakamura
Production assistant Tamiko Ouki
Production Chelfitsch (Tokyo) produttore associato: Precog (Tokyo)
Co-production Kaat/Kanagawa Arts Theater, ACM THEATRE [ART TOWER MITO], Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media [YCAM]
Supported by Saison Foundation, Japan Foundation for Regional Art Activities
Special thank to Steep Slope Studio

Running time 1 h 30'

National Première

Played in Japanese with Italian subtitles

A couple that lives in Tokyo. They are the main characters in the new work. Despairingly, they are encountering the difficulties to be content in their daily lives now. They have no hopes for mentally content lives, even though they have a partner who loves another from the bottom of their hearts. Is it because of the locked up feeling of Japanese society, or of Tokyo? Or, is there any more universal reasons? They cannot find out the reason exactly. They would imagine. They would imagine about the alternative way of life. Maybe, they can try to live positively, with all the excitement and enjoyment supplied in this sensational city. Or, maybe they can live, being much more sensitive to little things that happen in the ordinary lives…

But, these imaginations can only put them into a misery. Why can’t they live like how they imagine? And even worse, there is no decisive reason for them to live in a way they do at this moment; and that makes them feel even more miserable. This couple is reflecting the current mental situation of us, Japanese. (I don’t know whether I should restrict as Japanese or not.) In this work, I will look into this circumstance as
deeply as I can, and if possible, I would like to do it without losing a sense of humor. In speaking of the form, I would like to develop to flee the narrative even more than before..

Here follows an interview (April 2011) between Christophe Slagmuylder – Kunstenfestivaldesarts – and Toshiki Okada:

Could you tell us more about the specific challenges you faced and the methods you developed for your latest piece, The Sonic Life of a Giant Tortoise?

Critics remarked about my previous performances, such as Five Days in March, that they were cubist. For the past years I have been thinking, if they are cubist, then what could be the next step? And then one day I had the idea that Robert Rauschenberg’s Combine Paintings might be it. I thought that if I wouldn’t stop at constructing a performance around different point of view (if that’s cubism) but would also combine different kinds of materials this could certainly be considered as taking the speak about different materials? For a long time, I couldn’t figure this out. Oil paint applied to a plane canvas and stuffed animals are clearly two different. But the performers’ bodies are strictly speaking all made of the same material (namely protein). However, when I started working on The Sonic Life of a Giant Tortoise, I had the feeling I knew how to translate this idea into a workable method. I figured that if the actors would not all establish a relationship with or exercise influence on the audience in the same way, but would instead all consciously do this differently, then the materiality of each actor would be different and a Combine Painting style performace would be possible.

More specifically concerning the text of this piece, what were the starting points, influences, themes?

I wanted to reflect on what the everyday means to us. I portrayed everyday life before. One could say that I always portray the everyday. However, I never used everyday life as the main theme of a performance. I think this is the first time. This is also my most fantastic play so far and I have the feeling this is precisely because of its theme; although that sounds contradictory.

[…]How does The Sonic Life of a Giant Tortoise relate to your other performances? And why? And, more specifically concerning your latest work, how did you move from We are the Undamaged Others to this piece?

In The Sonic Life of a Giant Tortoise, I intend to explore the idea of not representing something directly on stage but instead letting it clearly come together in the minds of the spectators, like I did in We are the Undamaged Others, but this time in a more casual way. Also, I wanted to for once free myself from the stoic attitude of using only the theatrical language I developed myself and try to freely use other vocabularies, including borrowed ones, in this piece as well. I am also ambivalent towards the result. I even considered that it would be better to stick with the typical chelfitsch style after all. But I also think that by being more free I was able to create a more open piece. In fact, We are the Undamaged Others, which I made in amore casual manner, make a good pair. It’s not about which is the best. I intend to create other plays in the future using multiple different criteria and going back and forth between them. And I would like to make the swing of this movement as large as possible.

How should we understand the title of your latest piece?

Galapagosization (Galapagos Syndrome) was a bit of a hot topic in Japan in recent years. The term initially referred to the phenomenon that electronics made in Japan answer to such specific standards and are often times so specialized that they can only be used on the Japanese market. However, its use has become slightly broader and it now pertains to the uniqueness of Japanese culture in general. It is derived from the endemic ecosystem of the Galapagos Islands. So the words of a Giant Tortoise also mean ‘of the Japanese’. Though I am not sure if Japanese culture is even Galapagos – like or unique. The words Sonic Life are also linked with this Tortoise. In Japan there is a famous legend called Urashima Taro. It goes like this: a long time ago there was a man named Urashima who rescued a turtle from kids who were torturing it. The next day, a giant turtle came to express its gratitude to Urashima. It put the man on its back, took him time there, but when he returns home, he learns that hundred of year have passed…

http://chelfitsch.net/en/

Toshiki Okada

Toshiki Okada (1973) is a Japanese writer and director. In 1997 he founded the company chelfitsch, a childish adaptation of the word “selfish”. Okada’s creations are characterized by a highly visual method. In his work, he combines vernacular Japanese with a choreography that is dominated by the expressive physicality of the performers. The manner in which Okada brings bodies into movement, often through an exaggerated expressive sign language, is clearly reminiscent of dance. In September 2005, Toshiki Okada won the Yokohama Cultural Award /Yokohama Award for Art and Cultural Encouragement. The following year he represented his country at Stuecke ’06 festival and was appointed director of the 2006-07 Summit, a theatre festival in the Komaba Agora Theatre in Japan. Since then, Toshiki Okada and his company have performed at numerous international festivals and in venues around the world.
In recent years, he has widely drawn attention not only from the theater world and the contemporary dance scene, but also from those in fine arts and literature. In February of 2007 his collection of novels The End of the Special Time We Were Allowed debuted and was awarded the Kenzaburo Oe Prize. He has been invited to numerous art centers, museums and festivals such as Nam June Pike Art Center (Seoul), Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago), The National Museum of Art (Osaka) and Mori Museum of Art (Tokyo), and Yokohama Triennale.

The show

Programme