...modern age dwellers are all psychiatric patients...
A performance
that seeks a new method of self-expression for ouselves living in this age...
comparing the real world with that of a mentally ill person.
There are no fixed storyline. It evolves around a diary written by a man
suffering from phobic neurosis.
An everyday life of a man who can only find his reason d'être
in continuously fighting with society in his loneliness.
Endless obsessive ceremony of disinfection.
His childhood memories.
Performance continues, always antagonizing the psychological imagery inside
the man
and the modern world which surrounds him.
Large screens surround the three sides of the acting area, almost into the audience.
Images are screened by video projectors.
Objects are aligned neatly, containing TV monitors, displaying images that are
linked to that of the screens.
Noise music loud. Performers weave with the words from the man's diary and dance-like
movements
in the cascade of music, together with video images. The words are in Japanese,
but considering the oversea performance, the diaries and inserted titles have
either English subtitles or English narratives.
1998
in this event called the "U Experimental Theater Festival", there gathered the top "new age" experimetalists in Japan such as Ken-ichi Tanno, Morning Landscape...
What OM-2 showed here was somthing that they had always had avoided, a proscenium stage.
With "Nocturnal..." they had consistantly placed the acting within the audience.
Now they step back from the audience, talking to them, questioning them.
OM-2, a theater group known
for its oversea performances in USA and Africa, finished a successful run after
4 years of silence in Japan. The new piece “Convulsions of Mr.K” picks up the
psychopathologic nature of modern man. Breathtaking scenes follow one another.
Dancing in and out through a semi-transparent glass door. Grotesquely fat naked
woman screams. Beams of light accompanied by explosive sound. The images are
enough to shake the hearts of the audience. But the scenes made by the director
Shigeo Makabe seems to gouge deep into the images. For Instance, he shows the
multiple sides of the human nature by using the performers as screens, projecting
faces on faces. Three witch-like actresses appears repeatedly. The work seems
to have “Macbeth” deep underneath, seeing the way the women induce the violent
nature inside humanity. Nowadays the word “image” is an easy excuse for many
directors and artists. Lame and obscure expressions are often explained as “images”.
In that sense, “Convulsions of Mr.K” by OM-2 has shown the strength of expression
that does not rely on easy images.
by Takashi Shinkawa, excerpts from article "A Stage that
pierce Personality ",
AERA 1998.4.6
The "playback (along the linear timeline)" method is already insufficient to
reconstruct the complex and multi-layered elements, the associated ideas that
bring out memories and recollection, the images that present era is based on.
... This play points out the horizon and also suggests that this documentary-like
technique is effective to touch the present.
excerpt from "The Best Three of the Month" by Kojin Nishido,
"Theatro" June 1998