Japan in Dramaturgy | ADN Meeting 2017

KT: Now, it is time to start. So, shall we start? The Asian Dramaturg Network meeting, this is the last part. And this is Japan and dramaturgy. We have three speakers in this session. We have Mr. Kaku Nagashima, and he’s a pathfinder of dramaturgy in Japan. And he has been cooperating with many companies and plays Beckett, Sarah Kane, (0:56)??, Shakespeare, Ibsen, and he has been translating all these authors. And also, he is a member of Nakano (1:08 Seiken)?? Frankens. The next person sitting here is Mr. Ken Hagiwara, and he is a professor of the School of Global Japanese Studies, Meiji University. And (1:24??) of the works 1905 to 1966, and he has written many other books. And the person next to me is Mr. Peter Eckersall, and he is a professor of theatre and performing studies and the executive officer of the PhD program in theatre at the Graduate Center of City University of New York. And he is also Vice President of Performance Studies International. And he is a dramaturg for Australian arts company. And so, we have the authorities about Japan and dramaturgy. First, let me listen to Professor Hagiwara. And each speaker has about 20 minutes to speak. To be followed by discussions. So, Professor Hagiwara, please.

KH: My name is Hagiwara. ADN, TPAM and, well, other organizations are involved in the meeting, and I would like to express my gratitude. I am here in this session because Mr. Takiguchi asked me to speak here. In July last year, he asked me to speak in a certain meeting in July. And that the topic of the meeting is related to the topic today. I can speak German, and when a performance is invited from Germany to Japan, I translate the scripts for the German works. And in Rimini Protokoll, well, this was a really exceptional work. So, let me start. And this is the structure of, uh, the contents of my presentation. There is (an) introduction for those people who don’t know Rimini Protokoll. Then, after that, I would like to talk about the three performances in Japan in which I was involved. In all the three, there was an original that those were adapted to Japan. So, I would like to talk about what was the original and what was the adaptation for Japan. And lastly, I’ll talk about, uh, well, I’ll present the conclusion.

First, let me talk about the Rimini Protokoll. This is a brief (of the) Protokoll. There are three directors, two German and also one Swiss. So, there are three directors. There are no professional actors belonging to this group, and there are no existing play is used, so no existing script is used. Lay persons appear in the performance, so lay persons are (the) performers. And Rimini Protokoll call(s) them experts of everyday. The experts that suit the theme will appear in Rimini Protokoll performances. In those, presented as guest performances. And there are some adaptation(s) to suit the local characteristics of the place where the performance takes place. So, this is the first of the three that I would like to talk about.

This is Karl Marx: The Capital, Volume One -  Tokyo Version. This was performed in Tokyo in February 2009. This is (an) original version - Karl Marx: The Capital, Volume One. This was performed in Dusseldorf, Germany in 2006. There are eight so-called experts on the stage. And those eight actors (are) involve(d) directly or indirectly to the Karl Marx: The Capital. Like a professor of economics at a university or a former management consultant or activists. The text that was used was the interview material. These experts are interviewed in advance and those experts are not notified that they were going onto the stage. But the excuse used for the interview is that the research was going on about The Capital. So, they receive this interview and then the directors choose who they want on the stage. And then, the director tell(s) them that this is the casting selection procedure. So, eight experts go onto the stage. So, before that, about 100 people were interviewed and then eight people are selected from the 100 interviewees. And during the interview, the remarks are recorded and the remarks are spoken on the stage. So, these words, the lines, are lines that they uttered on the stage. Part of the text from The Capital is spoken. This is what happened during the performance in Japan. Rimini Protokoll wanted some additional Japanese performers. For instance, Japanese professors of economics or Japanese activists. And therefore, the same process was executed. The interviews, well, they’re not notified that this is a screening process. But, interviews are carried out and then those texts during the interview may be used on the stage. And a part of the German lines was cut because the total length of the play was kept the same. And also, the text of The Capital in Japanese translation, some of the lines from The Capital in Japanese translation are spoken on the stage by those “experts”. And this is what I did. 

During the research and casting, dramaturg and directors collected the information and they carried out interviews. So, I translated in those meetings. And also, there are original texts in Japanese, so I translated Japanese into German as subtitle. Rimini Protokoll said that they wanted interpreters to assist communication between German and Japanese casts, and that it was not possible to find any interpreter. So, I was asked to interpret on the stage. And therefore, I worked as an interpreter on the stage. And also, I operated the subtitles. As a result, I was one of the actors on the stage. And this is the schedule of the preparation interviews. Who was interviewed and where I went to assist in the interviews as indicated in this schedule sheet. And lastly, on the stage, this was the direction. I am, uh, on the right-hand side photo, I’m in the back in the left-hand side on the right photo.

The next example is Cargo Tokyo Yokohama. In November 2009, there was an original work. The original was called Cargo Sofia-x. It was performed in Basel, Switzerland in 2006. This was the first performance. And this traveled to other cities in Europe. The concept is as follows. From Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, to the city where this is supposed to be performed, this is virtual. So, the place of performance is called ‘X’. So, this is (a) virtual journey. The major performers were these two people from Sofia, capital of Bulgaria. This is the truck driver, Bulgarian. And also, the folk song singer. So, the concept is that this truck travels many countries across national borders. The audience is supposed to be transported on the truck. And they traveled to places that are associated with this truck driver. The text used, just like the first example, well, interviews were conducted with truck drivers and the lines from the interview are to be used in the performance. And the casts are selected based on the decision of Rimini Protokoll. So, they interviewed 20, 30 people and selected two. And the actual topic is logistics or transportation. And subtitle is shown for the audience. Especially, scandals related to logistics were projected on the screen in subtitle in front of the audience. In this adaptation, well, in Japan, there is no national border because we are surrounded by the sea. So, how shall we adapt to Japan? So, at the end, a Japanese truck driver and a Brazilian-Japanese truck driver was selected. And this is a virtual transportation. The virtual transportation cannot be from Sofia to Tokyo. So, what was done was a, well, a hypothetical virtual transportation from Niigata to Tokyo. The actual transportation actually, where the truck drove, was from Tokyo to Yokohama. And there is a long tunnel between Tokyo and Yokohama and also the virtual route from Niigata to Tokyo. So, the tunnel was the common thing between the two. And this is what I did. I acted as an interpreter during the interview. The interview meant the cast selection. And for the rehearsal, everyday, we were thinking about and decisions were made as to who needs to say what and what routes to be taken and I was updated about the latest decision and I need to organize what was decided into Japanese text. And those sent to me from the directors in English or German and I needed to translate into Japanese. And so, Japanese translation is to be spoken by those two actors who are acting as truck drivers. And also, in this case, Japanese scandals on logistics are written in English or German by those directors, and I translated those information about the scandals about logistics in Japan. Please do not take photo of the screen. This is the personal information of (the) truck driver. This is the Brazilian-Japanese candidate. And this is the script. Where, what takes places and which one of the truck drivers say what is indicated. And also, what subtitle information should be projected is shown here in time (16:03 series)?? manner. And this is, well, not exactly stage photo, but this is how it looked. I prepared a movie but because of time constraint, I decided not to show you the movie.

The third example - 100% Tokyo, November 2013. This is the original version. This is called 100% Berlin, performed in 2008 at the occasion of the celebration of the 100th anniversary of some theatre in Berlin. 100 residents, well, the general public were on the stage. And about the casting, the first person that was selected was the statistician of this town. And this statistician invited the next person, the next person invited the next one. So, this chain reaction method was used to gather the actors. But there is a quota. In the case of Berlin, 50 people had to be men, and 50 had to be women. And also, some age quota was imposed. So, it was more difficult to find the 99th or 100th candidate because of the existence of these quotas. So anyway, a hundred lay persons, the general public are gathered, and they moved around on the stage. It’s just like the questions are bombarded on the stage and they move around the stage based on ‘yes’ and ‘no’. And sometimes multiple options may be provided. So, this concept is that these people epitomizes the town. The concept was not very different when it came to Tokyo. The difference were the contents and nature of the questions because the questions in Tokyo had to be in line with the context of Japan like the Imperial House, earthquake (in 2011), nuclear powerplant accident, Olympic Games in Tokyo – those were the questions in Tokyo. And this is what I did. The first actor decided was a statistician from Tokyo Metropolitan Government, but he had some problem(s). So, I had to ask the professor of statistics in my university to appear on the stage. And then, other people are interviewed. The interviewer was a Japanese speaker, and the information was sent to me, and I translated them into German or English, and I uploaded the translation on the virtual space. And the directors in Germany looked at my translation from the virtual space and started preparation. And also, I recommended questions that are in line with the local context. There are a hundred actors, and there are directors, associate directors and others. Many staff was required. And so, I assisted in making lines for people to speak. I’m living in Tokyo, so I was on stage also. And these 100 people moved between ‘yes’ or ‘no’ question. And the question is projected in the back, and people who meet the criteria of the question may gather at the center, and also there are some multiple options given in some questions. And this is about earthquake. The question is “what do you do in case of an earthquake?”, and there are different options given in different colors. I have a video, but because of time constraint, I’m not going to play the video. This one here is schedule of preparation. There are three people – director, associate director and technician came from Germany. And from Japan, we have (an) assistant director who can also speak English, and dramaturg. German person. This German dramaturg spoke very good Japanese. Because there are a hundred actors, we needed quite big staff. The German dramaturg was not living in Japan, so I had to assist him understand the context in Japan. So, for this purpose, I volunteered to act as an associate dramaturg. And this is my last slide. The first work, Karl Marx, this was my title. Translation and operation of the subtitle and interpreter. This was my title. The second work, Cargo Tokyo Yokohama, my title is this one. Preparation of the Japanese text and interpret. The third work, the third piece, my title became ‘Associate Dramaturg’. And this is the idea that I, together with a number of other people, came up with. There was a four-year difference. And dramaturg in Japan, these are the thing that happened. The book ‘Dramaturg’ was published, written by Mr. Hirata of Keio University. And also, in Waseda University, there was a program for developing dramaturg started. And Professor Fujii led this initiative and he is here. So, the word ‘dramaturg’ is now starting to be recognized. But even before that, I was having some work relating to dramaturg. And I think I was an interpreter of context, or information provider, or perhaps joint producer, maybe. This concludes my presentation. Thank you for your attention.

KT: Thank you. So, let’s move on to Kaku Nagashima.

KN: Hi, good afternoon. My name is Kaku Nagashima. It’s my pleasure to be here. So, at first, I would like to extend my gratitude to ADN, Asian Dramaturgs Network meeting and the people involved in that as well as TPAM. So as for myself, I carry the title of a dramaturg and just as Hagiwara-san mentioned, perhaps without people knowing that I have been using this title as a dramaturg for about 20 years. So, dramaturgs have been developing in Japan. I would like to talk about two works to inform you what has been happening in Japan. So, when I first entered the theatre scene, actually (I) was a translator. So, it was, as I was introduced earlier, I was translating the script on the plays from Europe into Japanese. But the translations, when I did translations, it made me realize that translation I do carry my own interpretation because when you translate into Japanese, the works from European languages are already the translators’ interpretation goes into the translation - into the Japanese translation. This means that this interpretation is already there before the actors or the directors actually find their interpretations and that made me quite uncomfortable because I myself am not a director and I’m not an actor but it made me feel as though I was in a position to make a certain decision, bringing my own interpretation into the translation. So, I started to participate in rehearsals of the plays and started to work together with the directors and actors. Of course, this meant that, you know, I was still involved in translation but I would also be sharing information with the actors and the director and providing information so that together we can collectively find interpretation for the play. So, I was doing that in the early part of 2000s, but gradually, this made me - created the situation that I was doing something more than just translation. I was doing something more, additional and extra. And just as Hagiwara-san was saying, Mr. Hirata, Professor Hirata, from Keio University, he actually came back from Germany in 2004 and (I) happened to meet with this Japanese academic, Mr. Hirata. And he told me that there is a profession in Germany called ‘dramaturg’. So, I realized that, you know, what I was doing was a dramaturg, because that’s what he told me, rather than a translator. So, suddenly, from that day on, I became a dramaturg. Of course, without, you know, having talked with Mr. Hirata, I wouldn’t have known that what I was already doing was known as a dramaturg. And this, of course, term ‘dramaturg’ was not at all familiar and in Japanese, this was regarded as something that people don’t know what a dramaturg means or what it takes to be a dramaturg. And sometimes, there will be a misprinting of the dramaturg, or I would be called ‘Mr. Turg’, or it was not correctly translated into ‘dramaturg’. It was quite a void and empty kind of word – ‘dramaturg’. But, I was doing more of a collaboration with the director and the actors much more than what a translator usually does, but I became a dramaturg. So, I started to take on this title of a ‘dramaturg’ since 2007. So, after this, I just want to talk about some of the – one of the early works that I was involved in. One work that I just want to cite as an example, well, let’s just look at some of the images without going into too much details. And the work is called ‘Atomic Survivor’. This was the work from 2007. And this is a work which takes up nuclear energy as its theme. I will switch off the sound. Now, as I said, this is the work based on the theme of nuclear energy, nuclear plant, so this is almost like a documentary theater and also post-dramatic documentary. And the director is called Hatsumi Abe. And the work is about how nuclear fuels are made, produced and used in Japan, because we, in Japan, don’t know the entire picture about the production and the usage of nuclear fuels. So, the concept of this work is to depict that and to provide information about that. And in this work, the actors are actually - enact from the stage about how the materials, the raw materials imported into Japan, and how they are converted into nuclear fuel, and used in nuclear power plants, and how they are discarded or how they are recycled. So, the idea was to make it all visible - this entire nuclear fuel cycle. And a great amount of research went into this, and the actors actually were involved in the research and demonstration on stage. And most of the lines spoken by the actors on stage are taken from the publicity materials of electric power companies in Japan which use nuclear energy. So, this was all about how nuclear energy is so wonderful. And also, the models that you see onstage are all the things which are found in nuclear power plants made of cardboard box – cardboard materials – and the actors actually used those props and moved those props in order to demonstrate how this nuclear fuel cycle functions. So, this is a collective work, and it was not as though there was a script right at the beginning. So, the actors, with us, actually collected information materials. We went to nuclear power plants, we met with people, and we gathered information and materials. And spontaneously, the scenes were created and put together into this one work. Now, during that time process, I was leading the research work, and I shared the concept with everyone. I edited the text and I put together all the elements as a work. And actually, the text from some Chekhov’s work was used. This was from ‘Uncle Vanya’ by Chekhov. In Japan, the nuclear energy issue revolves around the fact that the electricity which is used mainly in cities actually are sourced from fuels, which are produced in the countryside, in the rural area. So, ‘Uncle Vanya’ and Chekhov’s work, as you know, is that the work, much of the other work, money in the countryside are sent to the city like Vanya to work, so there’s a bit of a similarity there. So, at that time when this work was actually performed, it carried both the humorous and bitter aspects but because of the 2011 nuclear power plant accident which happened in Japan, this work became very bitter. And I personally feel that we are no longer in the situation that we can put this on stage again. So, it’s called ‘Atomic Survivor’ – the work back in 2007.

Now, as a dramaturg, what I started to do, to simply describe it, I think I do two things. With the director, with the actor, with the team, I create a concept and I work with them to put together a concept. And another part of my work is that the creative process or dramaturgy - I actually take care of those things. So, these are the two important works that I do. Making concepts means that, of course, this comes way before when the actors and everyone start to do a rehearsal, and I think of this concept as like a ‘home’. And when you solidly build this home, the concept, even if you become lost, even if you’re away from home, and  if you become lost, you can always come back to that ‘home’. So, that’s what the concept is like. And that is why the concept is so important. If the concept is very simple and very strong, it’s all very good. And I work with the director to come up with that concept. And dramaturgy, this is my understanding - in terms of the concept, dramaturgy is not something that is fixed and rigid. It’s something more flexible and malleable, and you can be discovering things during the process. It’s more generative, so that is way during the process, it is very important to share the concept and you keep on having a dialogue and communication with the director, and you work with the team, the director and the actor in order to nurture that concept. So, as I said, you know, I take care of that process and the concept. So, that’s one.

Now, I started to take on work which was increasingly known as dramaturg as a profession without my knowing. But another important part of my work is that I don’t make the final decision. The decision-making, finally, rests with the actors, the director or the producer. That’s my opinion. So, it’s not myself. It’s not me who makes the final decision, but whether that final decision is good – is it really good? In order to look into that, in order to investigate whether that final decision is good, of course, you know, I attend lots of rehearsals and practices, I gather lots of materials and I do lots of discussion with the team. In other words, dramaturgy is like one zone or a place where you work collectively, collaboratively, with others. So, you are working together with others, and dramaturgy is like a place where you nurture and foster something, but that does not belong only to the dramaturg. It belongs and is owned by everyone or even by the work itself, and the work of a dramaturg is to take care and to assist. Now as you watch this video clip of ‘Atomic Survivor’, you get an idea that it’s a very heavy kind of work. 

Let me move on to the next work that I would like to show you. This is not a play, this is not a theatrical work, but this is quite a new example, a new kind of work. This is a part of the other project which was going on until December over last year as part of an art festival called the ‘Saitama Triennial’. (37:05)?? And Saitama is a prefecture which is a better town Tokyo. It’s situated north of Tokyo, it’s a neighboring prefecture to Tokyo, and it’s an art festival and this project was part of the triennial. This is a participatory art with no performance but I, myself, brought in the way of thinking as a dramaturg to lead the project and to - that the project proceed. The title of the project is called ‘Yajirushi’ or ‘Arrows’ in English. And this is inspired by a Japanese playwright called ‘Shogo Ota’, and he actually he came up with a series of plays entitled ‘Yajirushi’. ‘Arrows’ is made of four different artworks and this is about the story of quite a - quite strange kind of play where the other people in town go around finding and discovering arrows. So, the concept actually is quite simple. I asked that the local people in Saitama prefecture to make, to produce, arrows. It didn’t matter what the material was. As long as it was an arrow, it was fine. And there was a team of artists gathered. These artists are to form a team, some of them were actors, and we had photographers and graphic designers. Also, architects as well as researchers and also there’s costume designers. So, this was a team of such people and we made preparation for this project and we asked that the local people to make arrows. So, it was almost like the local people were artists who were involved in the stage-related arts to make some, you know, stage art works. And we asked them that it didn’t matter what the material was, you know, they produced and make arrows and put the arrows by their house or near their homes. And the team of artists would go around the town and take photos of the arrows. It was not as though the photos would be taken and to show the photos to the audience or the spectators on the spot, but the idea was to gather these photos of the arrows. So here you can see a photo of a transparent arrow which was made by a student. This was an actor. But here, this house, on the wall of the house, this is an arrow made of ivy. Also, this arrow was made by the residents of the house. Here, there are four types of arrows by the entrance. You can see those arrows. And this is a cake shop. And you can see very closely, to the top of the cake, there is actually one arrow here. And actually, it’s a pie and, you know, once – it’s only one piece of a pie available per day so as long as this one, you know, pie is sold, it will be totally sold out. And here, this is one district office, the local district government office participated. Can you see here on the glass window there is an arrow made of paper? Here, I’m pointing to a non-actor. And this is a shop selling contact lenses, and this is a panel that you can see to get the eyesight tested. And this is an actor here. So again, arrows. And this is a travel agent called H.I.S, and H.I.S actually used the world map and these are the little airplane models and they created an arrow. And this is an arrow made by a family. The father made an arrow, used sake bottles. And the little brother used the brown - the stones. The mother used tree branches and the elder brother used, uh, created an arrow at school as part of the pottery class. And this is an arrow which, well, somebody made it, but this is not a work, but this was found on the street. This is at the reception of a department store. So, you can find arrows there.  And this is an arrow made of dry flowers – dried flowers – and some strings. Also same. This was created by a designer who did some design for a cake shop. And this is a dry-cleaning shop. Can you see? It's made of a clothes hanger. And so, it’s an arrow made of a clothes hanger. And this a café – sandwiches, the cake and the rice. Arrows made of plant. Coffee beans. And this was not man-made, but right in the middle of the field, can you see a line here? And after the rice were harvested, you know, somebody said that this looks like a big arrow. And here, there’s an actor. And this also on the street. This is an arrow somebody made. This arrow was made by a three year-old child, using for the very first time some paint. And this was at the top of a condominium building. Well, sorry. The image is rather rough, but this arrow is made of daikon – the radish. So, the radish was dried and then made into an arrow. This is sweet potatoes. And these arrows are made by some kids. And this is a textile – woven textile. And inside the textile, you can find an arrow. So, in this way, the local people came up with their own ideas because as long as they were arrows, they could use any kind of materials. So, in a way, in a nice way, I thought that they were rather crazy coming up with wonderful ideas and making all sorts of arrows. And the artists, as I said, they visited all these arrows and put photos together – took photos with the actors. In the photos, and at the end, all these photos were collected and exhibited on the walls of a gallery inside a department store. So, of course, the photos were arranged nicely on the walls of this gallery at the department store. So, of course, this was not a performing art. It was not a performance, but in order to do this project, I was working as a dramaturg – at least that was my intention because there was a team and we created a concept and the concept was shared with the team as well with the local people who were participating in the project. And these local people, we did not ask them or, you know, force them to contribute. They were, you know, participating as artists, almost, in order to make those little small-scale arrows. And as a result of that, interesting arrows were generated and created, and we put them together. We were doing editing kind of work. So, this was not a theatrical work, but I completely take this as a project where I worked as a dramaturg in order to inject everything. Utilizing the sensibilities as well as the skills and knowledge and the way of working as a dramaturg. So, I have been using the title, and working under the title of dramaturg for 12 years. And in recent years, I have been using theatrical ideas or dramaturg-like ideas not in a theater, but outside of the theater, that has become a very strong interest of mine in recent years.

So, lastly, I want to mention something that is quite relevant to what I have been talking about so far. Well, you know, there’s a composer called Brian Eno, and he is a composer and musician who is known as the pioneer of the ambient music or the environmental music. And Brian Eno has said in an interview that there are two types of composers. One is a composer as an architect – architecture type of composition. And there’s another type – composers as gardeners. This means that the architecture type of composers is that they draw, they design, they come up with a design and ask other people to cooperate and use other people’s skills and abilities in order to build and construct a building. So, the end result is based on a design. But composers as gardeners means that the composers actually plant seeds and wait to see exactly what will come up in the end. And to make all that process very interesting, and I find it interesting to nurture and foster. I’m not saying that one or the other is better or worse, but I’m just saying that as part of the collective work and collaborative work, the second type – the composers as gardeners – is what I find more interesting. So, I think that the work of being a dramaturg means that as part of the creation is to take care of the work and the process of making a work. So, that’s all. Thank you for listening.

KT: Thank you. Now, I would like to invite Mr. - Professor Eckersall, please.

PE: Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Peter Eckersall and first of all, I’d like to thank the Asian Dramaturg Network and TPAM, (49:21 Hong Yen)?? and to my colleagues for such a wonderful set of presentations over the last couple of days. It’s been very stimulating. And so, I’m not a Japanese dramaturg nor am I working here as a dramaturg. So, one might, well, ask the question of why am I on this panel, but I was thinking that I would be – that my role would be to try and look at the question of dramaturgy in Japan through the lens of my work as a Japanese theatre scholar. In some ways, what I hope to do here is to show, to some extent, how dramaturgical thinking, which is the awareness of structures and forms in relation to context and agency, has shaped my understanding of Japanese theatre. So, I’m very much talking about, um, I’m not talking about the dramaturg. I’m talking about the dramaturgy here. And I think that needs to be very clear in what I have to say. So, in 2014, I was fortunate to convene the European section of the, sorry, the performing arts section of the European section of Japanese Studies. And I chose to write the call for papers on the theme of dramaturgy. And I asked many of my colleagues who come from the world of Japanese theater studies to think about Japanese theater through the lens of dramaturgy. So, here I’m talking about quite a diverse range of scholars, from people who work on ancient classical texts such as noh or kabuki or bunraku right through to people who work on modern theater or people who work on the contemporary theater. And in the call for papers, I wondered if we could think about (51:18 Zaiami’s)?? dramaturgy. We talked about Zaiami’s writings on theater as a dramaturgy. Or could we talk about kata as dramaturgy? The forms that are associated with the kabuki theater. To my surprise, actually, many scholars took the theme seriously. And they really did address the question of dramaturgy in their papers. So, they took it seriously and began to think about their work on traditional theater in more structural, analytical and formal terms. Indeed, we agreed that it was helpful to think about these classical forms of Japanese theater as having dramaturgy, and giving rise to dramaturgical practices. And also, as a follow on from that, asking dramaturgical questions about these forms. So, it was a kind of experiment that I think was productive in the sense that it enabled a set of questions to be asked about these forms, that could be asked in a different way, that could be asked more from the perspective of practice. Of how these forms of practice and what that relationship of practice has to the existence of the form and its history and its present-day understanding. This is not really a picture of a conservative noh scholar thinking dramaturgically but I couldn’t resist the bad joke. So, why not include Zaiami’s treaties on the actor, or permutations of kabuki and (52:39 joriri)?? as fundamentally dramaturgical? Why not appropriate the term? The term is, after all, a very complicated one in all fields. It’s not necessarily a term that is very comfortable within western theater history either. Arguably, the history of Japanese theater has a long history of thinking about, theorizing and engaging with notions of time, space, narrative structure, audience and the politics of theater. So much that we can say much of this thinking is dramaturgical - whether we call it that or not. The experiment with my colleagues, conservative noh scholars for example, to think about their work on historically investigating and classifying noh in terms of dramaturgy was an example of how we have already internalized dramaturgical thinking into our understanding of Japanese theater. So, in some senses, I believe that this conference was productive because, in fact, we’re kind of naming a practice that we were already doing. Moreover, the history of modern theater in Japan is important to consider in this regard. The pre-war, avant-garde and political theater were closely aligned with trends in Europe. So much so that the Japanese theaters of the time were introducing new aesthetic regimes in a way that was a form of co-located and dynamic implementation of modernity. I like to think about the early twentieth century Japanese theater not as a theater that is - I mean the normative practice is to think in terms of second wave modernity or a copy of something. I think we should resist that kind of thinking. This is an example of a co-located modernity – a modernity that’s unfolding in theater at the same time as it is in Europe. This figure here (55:04 Wide Yamatoshi)?? is a very famous Japanese designer, playwright, director. He did many, many different practices – filmmaker and dancer. And one of the things he did was he wrote a book in 1930 called essays on proletarian theater in Japan. Published in 1930, it outlined a comprehensive model for theater as a political vanguard. These essays were the first manifesto for theater in Japan to combine the local perspective with the conception of utopian socialist internationalism. The book closely followed (55:43 Piscotoll’s)?? arguments for a proletarian theater, but my point is that this internationalization of a socialist aesthetic is also something that is very local, very much grounded in a situation that unfolded here in Japan in that time with its own particular conditions, of its own particular dramaturgical intensities. One could argue that this relationship that Japan has to modern drama makes Japanese theater in the modern period inherently dramaturgical. And that’s a point for another discussion, but it’s something that I think is implicit in the presentation that I’m making today. The question of the relationship that Japan has to theater in the modern period being one that is very aware of form makes that theater very dramaturgical by nature. 

People might know that I’ve written extensively on the 1960s in Japan, and this revolutionary era linked notions of social dramaturgy and protest with performance. Zero Jigen’s gishiki rituals which are pictured here on the panel with the women with their hands in the air was just one of many examples of performances that explicitly used bodies and bodily incursions into public spaces in a very over political way. So, this is dramaturgical thinking that I think is very prominent in the kind of work that is being done here. Artists producing these kinds of ruptures in the 1960s included (57:24 Kara Judo, Teriyama Shuji, High Red Center and Hijikata Tatsumi)???, and the list goes on. We could make a long, long list of artists who were thinking about the relationship between public space and social dramaturgy and embodied performance practices. And anybody who’s known my work will know that I’m very interested in the kind of crossovers between the performance and the protest culture that was around at the time that was also highly performative. Perhaps we can summarize this kind of relationship in a very famous quote from the theorist Henry (58:05 Defare)?? where he says, “in the street, a form of spontaneous theater, I become spectacle and spectator and sometimes actor. The street is a place to play and learn. The street is disorder. The disorder is alive. It informs, it surprises, revolutionary events generally take place in the street”. As a dramaturgy linking artist, protester and the everyday, this is a very good expression of the kind of dramaturgical intensity that I’m trying to talk about in 1960s performance. Yoshimi Shinya’s (58:48 toshino)?? dramaturgy or dramaturgy of the city, published in 1997, I think updates this idea and gave us a very productive set of conversations about the way that we could understand social dramaturgical practices in Japan. His work focused attention on social dramaturgy in work that is relevant to addressing civic performances and rituals as well as documentary theater. For Shinya’s dramaturgy in the city outlined a proposition for a social dramaturgy of Tokyo. And the influence of this work takes in the notion of performance in the city, and the city as performance. In other words, the city performs a certain kind of social dramaturgical practice for us. Takayama Akira, with his company Port B, and as well as a solo artist, has produced work that draw on documentary theater techniques, art and social practice and social dramaturgy to explore the relationships between art activism and city life. Many people here are familiar with his work. For example, Takayama’s ’Happy Island – The Messianic Banquet of the Righteous’ is a video installation featuring a herd of cattle chewing curd and showing a cow being led through an evacuated town in the Fukushima radiation exclusion zone. The cow is being led by a farmer who owns the cows and he’s seen in this image from the video wearing a kyogen monkey mask. The farmer has his farm in the exclusion zone, and he refuses to slaughter his irradiated and unproductive cows. He’s a farmer; these animals are supposed to be productive animals. They’re supposed to produce either milk or meat, and he refuses to slaughter his cows against the edicts of the government in order to make a point about the misinformation that the government has, uh, the misinformation the government has, um, the misinformation that is the reason out of the government’s treatment of the victims of - especially the people who are living in and around that exclusion zone in Fukushima. 

Another work here is the Tokyo heterotopia project which people participate in an urban walking journey – or actually, you actually catch trains and you arrive at particular locations in Tokyo where you can listen in on a local broadcast network that tells you the hidden stories of those places. Typically, they’re places that include places where immigrants live, people whose lives are invisible in the daily life of Tokyo are made visible, and what we listen in to is some kind of conversation about their work or their life or the activities that are taking places in those places. Takayama’s referendum project, an ongoing documentary artwork to record interviews with school children about their responses to Fukushima is, he says, quote “an attempt to archive the fissures of our time”. So I think these are very strong examples of a kind of dramaturgy of the city involving social practice that my colleagues have also talked about, Rimini Protokoll, but also the project that you, my colleague, was talking about in the countryside with the local population. We could also look at Chiaki Soma’s Theater Commons Tokyo project as another important reference. And I think one of the discussions around the conference in general has been the prominence of a so-called social practice in relation to art that a lot of examples of works that people have brought to this conference had been artworks that you could put in that kind of social practice context. And indeed, maybe, you know, we’re in that kind of social turn as it’s been called in Japanese, not in Japanese, but in theater studies scholarship.

I’m jumping around a bit but people have mentioned Hirata Eiichiro’s dramaturgy published in 2010 which introduced concepts from European dramaturgy to Japanese readers. And this was, I think, the first substantial book on dramaturgy in Japanese. But Hirata is a scholar of German theater and he’s very much, I think, influenced by his understanding of German theater as the kind of gold standard of theater. And while his knowledge of German theater is very rich and very deep, his book also raises questions, I think, for us to consider - what does it mean that one of the key takes on dramaturgy in Japanese has been written from a German theater perspective. As we know, the history of dramaturgy splits into factions in modern theater. German theater history emphasizes a legacy of dramaturgy that begins with Lessing, aend moves into the twentieth century via Brecht, Heine Muller, and in recent times of (1:04:22 Freya Yellenec)??. And while many of us, I think, many of us are very influenced by this trend in theater and it is a question that we need to ask in terms of our own positioning in relation to our topic that, you know, there is an implicit cultural narrative in much of the history of this work. We also mentioned already the training program in dramaturgy that was undertaken by Professor Fuji Shintaro over here at Waseda University which was perhaps one of the most sustained training programs in dramaturgy to be undertaken in Japan. It was developed - it aimed to develop an awareness of dramaturgy over a year-long series of workshops and symposia on the theme of dramaturgy held at Waseda University, and funded as a major research initiative by the agency for Cultural Affairs. This project included an extensive program of visits to Japan by dramaturgs from Europe and by scholars such as (1:05:32 Hunts Tilsayman)??, and including myself who is also very kindly invited to present at this symposium. Much of the focus of this symposium was to better understand contemporary dramaturgical practices and, I guess, there’s an implicit connection there to so-called new dramaturgy practices. The term coined by Marianne Van Kerkhoven, the Flemish dramaturg, the late great Flemish dramaturg who worked with so many contemporary theater producers in Europe, and she was, I think, one of the most important theorists of our contemporary understanding of dramaturgy. So, much of this was introducing us in a very productive way to some of those ideas. But again, questions need to be asked about the directions of this kind of work, again, you know, I principally work on this kind of theater in my own practice and in my own theoretical scholarship. But this work has come under critique for its, sometimes, its perceived elitism. Certainly, some of this work can be expensive. It is imbricated into a global festival infrastructure. All of these kind of contexts are being challenged now by newer questions about dramaturgy and performance. I’d just like to finish now to present a short, more detailed, case study in just a little bit more detail. And I know I’ve been jumping around, but I think this is an appropriate point to end. 

Many of us are familiar with the work of the playwright and director Okada Toshiki. Arguably, his work has shown a strong relationship to dramaturgy. For example, in his splitting of gesture and text in many of his works, especially in the early works - for those of you who know his work, know that for a long time he worked with a company of actors where he taught them a particular method, or it was not so much a method but a rehearsal process for developing his texts. He wrote his texts and directed them in a way that created this very strong sense of dislocation between the spoken text and the physical vocabulary of the actor. And he also wrote about this as a dramaturgical tendency in very interesting ways. And in recent works, he's occasionally adopted or co-opted the structure of a noh play, a ghost play, in order to address in ground and floor, for example, his play about loss in Fukushima. A way of dealing with trauma and loss and memory. And currently, he’s in Germany, actually, and he’s written a new modern noh play which is being premiered at the Munich Kammerspiele, I think, the main theater house in Munich which is a commission of that theater house for Okada to write and direct a play with the German ensemble. It’s a three-year project where he’s going to do three plays. So, there’s a very strong connection to dramaturgy in his work, and I’ve been writing about his work in terms of sensibility of ambient dramaturgy. Most recent, Brian Eno is a good reference point here. Most recently, in his 2015 play ‘God Bless Baseball’. So, I took this idea of ambience from a really wonderful book by Paul Roquet who wrote about Japanese atmospheres of self. It’s not a book about theater. It’s a book about sociology and aesthetics. But it’s a book that talks about the ambience, the quality of ambience, and how that sits in relation to Japanese society and culture. According to Paul Roquet, ambience serves to make strange the idea of the environment by stressing its subjective quality, refusing to equate it with a natural world order. So, the natural world existing independently from human agency. He also connects ambience with the idea of neoliberal culture and says that, you know, we can fall into the trap of this kind of aesthetic reverie, where we just get lost in the sublime, but lose our critical distance and our political perspective. ‘God Bless Baseball’ explores the game of baseball as a way to examine the complexities of the historical, cultural and political relationship between Japan, Korea and the United States. It is a self-described allegory, and the play explores the histories of cultural imperialism, flows of culture, flows of language and, very often, miscommunication. And there’s a quote there from the play and I’ve got my time I know. Towards the end of the play, the dramatic momentum stops, and we see instead something more akin to an installation artwork. And this is where I’m interested in this - your work in installation spheres because I think there’s a tendency, you know, in Okada’s work now where he shifts out of the dramatic structure into an installation practice, and he shifts the dramaturgy of the work from a kind of dramaturgy that’s based in narrative and story into a kind of ambient installation practice. And in this play, for example, at the end of the play the text kind of stops and the set, which is that parabolic antenna, which is a very ambiguous item in the play - it starts to melt, it starts to drip, it starts to lose its structure. And the play kind of stops as the actors stand there and watch this thing melt. And there’s a series of narrative devices, which I don’t have time to go into, that explore this understanding of losing one’s sense of self and moving into this kind of ambient space – this ambient atmosphere. So, the closing of the play has been described as a narrative of implosion, and I wonder about the dramaturgical implications of this. Okada’s work shows us a dramaturgy that is ambient where the expressive vocabulary of theater is transformed into an uncanny, affective moment of implosion. This is a dramaturgical intervention that takes us into the internal aesthetics of Japanese theater in the sense that it could be like the end a noh play which is also a moment of dramatic implosion. On the other hand, it is something that we understand through a more cosmopolitan, post-dramatic perspective on dramaturgy. And so, what this means requires us to read the dramaturgy of the play. And the play puts that as a key question in the closing moment because it stages the dramaturgy for us. It takes us out of the world of text and just says what you see is what you get – now you have to think about it. So, it takes us to the dramaturgy, a very material dramaturgy, for us to consider. So, thank you very much for your time.

KT: Thank you very much Professor Eckersall. From a historical development of dramaturgy in Japan, he provided us with the major findings and his presentation, his lecture, is inter-related to the first two presentations. Before I open the floor for questions, there are of course various issues presented by Professor Eckersall. So, Mr. Nagashima or Mr. Hagiwara, will you respond to what Professor Eckersall said? One thing that was, uh, one thing specific is Mr. Hirata’s book and all of the three speakers talked about Mr. - Professor Hirata’s book. And there is a certain model of Germany, and that German model had a big impact. In Japan, there has been a long-standing culture of translation. So, in UK and in U.S, there is a text manager and would that be possible to have somebody in that position? Dramaturgy in Japan, well, was discussed by Professor Eckersall. So, how would you respond to Professor Eckersall’s lecture? 

KN: One thing, well, yes, there was a book on dramaturgy written by Professor Hirata. And German dramaturgy was introduced time when there was an issue of environment for the producer. There was company, so the companies were the units of the performance and in the 1980s, 90s, the production system was introduced. So, the public theater produced and, uh, produced the pieces of work. So, this kind of productions increased. So, the directors became isolated because they did not work with the usual people. And, instead, the producers had to produce pieces of work together with, uh, different people. And under these circumstances, directors had to make decisions and that it tended to be isolated. Not all of the directors wanted to work in this kind of environment. So, because of this isolation of the director, perhaps, it would be better for there to be one other partner to cooperate with the directors. So, that is a change in the early 2000, and Mr. Hirata talks about that in his book. And I was doing some of this work, so I started to be called a dramaturg.

KH: If I may make some supplementary comment, this is the first time for me to come across the word ‘text manager’. After World War II in Japan, as Mr. Nagashima said, the system of companies eroded from the end of 20-, uh, World War II and until 1980 - what is called as shingeki established the companies. And half inside of shingeki companies, half scholars, researchers, and scholars who conducted researches of British, German and the French literature was involved in the company, and they acted as an advisor. So, in hindsight, in terms of the text management, they were playing a role as a dramaturg. This is my additional information.

KT: Thank you very much. Because of bad time management, we are almost running out of time, but I would like to open the floor for question. And if you have a question, please raise your hand and wait for the microphone.

AM1: Thank you very much for your very interesting presentations. Let me ask my question in Japanese. I have a question to Professor Eckersall. In your slide, Eiichiro Hirata’s dramaturgy – the spelling was interesting. And when I hear dramaturgy is ‘gy’ - that’s the spelling I think about. That in English-speaking country, that maybe ‘gii’ instead of ‘gy’, and that was interesting to me. When a dramaturg was introduced in the UK when Laurence Olivier  (1:19:41 assistant)?? traveled from London to Berlin, and he brought that idea back to UK and U.S and Australia, were there any reasons for this idea to be introduced based on some needs?

PE: Thank you very much for your question. It’s Kenneth - I’m thinking of the - somebody remind me of the guy who helped set up the National Theater… Kenneth Tynan. Thank you, yup. So, this is a… I think there are a number of parts to your question. The first one is, I hope, I translated the katakana correctly on the slide. I may have made a mistake that - as far as I know, I didn’t have the book with me when I made the slide and I tried to find it on the Internet but couldn’t. So, broadly speaking, I think that this understanding of dramaturgy in the U.S, based mainly in English-speaking cultures, is the culture of the dramaturg as literary manager or text manager as opposed to a dramaturg who works in a production process in a collaborative way. I think there are various historical reasons for this but the figure of Ken Tynan is very important in this story because he was somebody, as people know, he was very influenced by the work of Bertolt Brecht, a great scholar of Brecht, he came back to Britain and was essentially sidelined in the establishment of the National Theater in the early 1960s by Laurence Olivier because Olivier didn’t think that there was a role for that kind of more politicized dramaturgy to take place in the British theater and it was a kind of contest of ideas. Tynan lost [laughs]. Whether we go on from that to then blame Laurence Olivier for the fact that literary managers were, generally speaking, the main dramaturgical role that’s available in English-speaking theaters or not, I don’t know. But certainly, if you look at the contemporary theater and the groups who make, I think, distinctive and original theater like for example (1:22:09)?? or the work of (1:22:12 David)?? or many other people in Australia. It’s much more dramaturgical in a more complex way and we’ve actually actively worked against that idea of dramaturgy being simply just, well it’s never simple, but [air quote] just being literary management.

KT: Another question over there.

AM2: Thank you for the presentations. Very interesting. They’re from various standpoints. It was very interesting to hear about Japan in dramaturgy to dramaturgy. During the session of dramaturgy in relation to dance, I was a speaker. So, this is not part of that. But, when we look at dramaturgy in a context of Japan, of course, you have to look into the physical movement and to look at - get that into the thinking of dramaturgy is important in Japan. So the, what you mentioned, Professor Eckersall, the kata or the, you know, noh performing arts. I think it’s quite, you know, interesting but also very difficult to verbalize that. So, this dramaturgy in German context, you know, how to put that into dramaturgy in the German context. I think that’s quite challenging. Perhaps this might’ve been done from now on, in terms of dramaturgy in German context as, you know, Mr. Hirata has written about. So, I would like to have your comment about dramaturgy in relation to the physical aspect and also at Aichi University, in the (1:24:07)?? course on the media field, there is a program to educate dramaturgs, and there is a person called Satsuki Yoshino who is teaching along with Mr. Nagashima who is also teaching at Aichi University. So, because this is in the course of media, this is to, well, educate dramaturgs as a media (1:24:37)?? I just wanted to make that as a supplementary information, comment. Thank you.

KT: So, related to your first part of the comment, which is a question, Professor Eckersall would you like to respond?

PE: I think I’d like to answer in two ways. The first way is to acknowledge that the field of dance dramaturgy is a relatively new field of practice. And we’re only now, I think, developing more understanding of the potentials of that field and how dramaturgs work in the context of contemporary dance. Specifically, though, in the Japanese context, we - I would go back to the 60s and think about the provocations that were made for the body. In (1:25:30 Angora)?? Theater, you know, (1:24:07 Kata Juto’s)?? work on privileged body, (1:24:35 Hijikata’s)?? testing of the limits of the body. These very political statements that were made about the body. I’ve always responded to as very strongly dramaturgical interventions, even though they might not be called dramaturgy.

KT: So, Mr. Nagashima.

KN: So, from a different perspective, perhaps I can respond to that question. I hope that I can answer it. And also, I wanted to ask a question to Professor Eckersall. What is not a part of a text, you know, how should we look at that – how we should deal with that - what is not in the text. And in the audience, there is Yokoyama-san from (1:26:26 Spark)??. And Yokoyama-san mentioned going back all the way back to Greek language and drama is an action and one needs to regard that as very important, you know, what Yokoyama-san mentioned made me realize that because we often think about text means just a script. But if it is all about action, dramaturgy is looking at what series of moves and movements would be leading unto a certain meaning and significance and taking different standpoint and different positions to look into that. So, it’s only an action, a part of an action, what the actors do, what is not verbal, what is not put together as words, how dramaturgy or how dramaturgs would take care of that, and what kind of approaches and thoughts go into that – I think these are all important. Also, another point which might be related to this is that, well, the Zaimi?? dramaturgy, or what is not a part of the theater, even in the old, you know, folk tales of Japan, you’ll find something similar or similar kind of types and also there’s even social type of dramaturgy, too. So, what can be read as dramaturgy, you know, in the post-process and also there’s dramaturgy that you can embrace and, you know, look at during the process. So, that’s what is the point that made me think about those things while I was attending this session. So, this dramaturgy that you read and interpret and analyze and you can find meaning in it. And there’s another kind of dramaturgy where the creators manipulate or, you know, operate in order to create certain meaning or significance. So, I think that for me, during the process, how certain things can be utilized for whatever end - that is where my interest lies. That is the only thing and that is all, you know, very important to me. But as an end result, if there is a work, you know, that you can focus something else as part of the dramaturgy, this is quite different from Zaimi?? because usually there’s a text and, you know, what you read from the text is different and how can we go back in history and time to, you know, read and find the meaning from the text. So, that was the point which occurred to me while I was listening to Professor Eckersall’s presentation.

PE: Well, fortunately, I’m not a scholar of Zaimi??, but what I was interested in doing was provoking a different kind of thinking about the critical scholarship in noh because it is overly concerned with very accepted notions of history, and actually it is overly concerned with categorization. So, if you go to a conference of scholars of noh, they’re very much concerned with categorizing certain kinds of forms, certain kinds of images, and what I was interested in was provoke - trying to provoke a commentary around the socio-cultural context of those forms. So, what does it mean that an ancient form that has a canonical status is only studied in terms of its categories. Why don’t we think about it in other ways, why don’t we think of it in ways - and to think about dramaturgy, for me anyway, means that we have to think about the practice of the form. Maybe in historical terms, but very much also takes us to the contemporary relevance of those forms and the comment - the questions that we can ask about what the forms are doing now. And that’s why, you know, it’s interesting that we’re seeing this revived interest in noh as a form once again by contemporary writers. I mean, in the 50s with (1:30:53)?? noh plays, but Kanro (1:30:55)?? Takeshi wrote modern noh plays in the 1990s or early 2000s. And now Okada is very explicitly taking this form, because for him, I think it offers, well, I don’t speak on behalf of him, but what I’m seeing is that it enables him to say things that can’t be said in other ways, and it’s the dramaturgy of that form. He’s not taking an ancient noh play. He’s taking the form, the structure and applying it to his own sense of sensibility and I think that’s the provocation that I was trying to look for in that session that we had on the dramaturgy of Japanese theater.

KT: Well, we can go on and on with this discussion around this theme but it’s already four. But if there’s one last question, we’d like to entertain that before ending this session. Can we have a microphone?

AM3: Thank you very much for the very interesting talk today. I, well, the what dramaturgy is, well I have come to know that today. With respect to dramaturgy, the people who are involved in it, actors, the directors, maybe they go to the ground from a different position. So, as a sense, as we look at the direction of the modern or contemporary theater, and also how -what sort of role does dramaturgy will play in the coming period, how that will fare in the coming period, that is what I would like to know. Thank you.

KT: So, perhaps, very brief comments from each of you?

KN: How it’ll turn out, I want to know that very badly. Very briefly. Two points, very short comments. One, the theater is a mirror that reflects the world. That’s Hamlet. It is true, I think, the world is very complex, the speed is fast, the information runs fast, there is also fragmentation that is going on, and so this is a very complex and fast-moving world and individual artists whether can – we can reflect that. So, in this respect, the possibility of a collective production is as a potential mediators or the gap-filling people or caretaker, but in many ways the dramaturg can play some roles here. That is point number one. And the other, point number two, this has to do with what I said earlier. For theater, the knowledge is (1:34:05)?? for theater will be used. That’s waste. So, I think we have to go out, we should go out, and collaboration should happen outside of our world. Not just amongst professionals, but perhaps with amateurs or people on the street. I think I see a potential there.

KH: Well, I think that’s a good segue to what I want to say. What kind of theater should be played in what context – I think that’s a key to the development, further development of dramaturgy. As mentioned many times, the social dramaturgy is a very good keyword here. And also, people on the street, on that point, (1:34:54 posterior, well not…)?? well, as Mr. Nagashima said, the dramaturgy, in the process, if we can wrap our brain around that, well, dramaturgy that is enduring or ongoing, well, the… uh, that could spread. That’s sort of my sense about the protocol. Thank you.

PE: I’m also in general agreement. I think that the potential of dramaturgical thinking is to take our practices into many other locations and many other kinds of practices. So, at a conference on dramaturgy, we’ve seen artworks that take place in theaters, in the street, in art galleries, in hotel rooms, in the media, in data space, and we’ve also had a series of reflections on that which I think are also dramaturgical - writing about work, debating about work, having conferences, I see, also as being dramaturgical activity. And so, I would like to see this kind of applications of dramaturgy expand into the future as well.

KT: Thank you very much. So, the Asian Dramaturg Network to all the (1:36:14 such a potentials that we’d like to move forward)?? Thank you very much for your presentations today. Please give another big round of applause to the panelists once again.