PPAF focuses on fragmentary, experimental, and particular approaches to contemporariness of performing arts by artists of “postmainstream,” regardless of chronological order of their emergence, in contrast to integral, comprehensive, and universal approaches of “mainstream.”
PPAF2010
MaisonDahlBonnema & Needcompany
The Ballad of Ricky and Ronny—a pop opera
Zan Yamashita
It’s just me, coughing
Forced Entertainment
Sight is the Sense that Dying People Tend to Lose First
Quizoola!
Hotel Modern
KAMP
Fuyuki Yamakawa
BlackHair Ballad
PPAF2006
Forced Entertainment
Instructions for Forgetting
“I ask my friends to send me stories and videotapes. For the stories I ask for things that are true. The topic can be anything. I ask for short reports on things that have happened in the world. For the tapes I say, ‘Don’t make me something special – send me what you have.’ I say, ‘I’m sure that whatever you choose is bound to be right.’” Composing the “stories” and videotapes that were unintentionally collected from his friends, artistic director Tim Etchells explores connections and gaps between text and image and relation between reality and fiction through his own speech-act in this experimental documentary / theatrical lecture (February 24-26, 2006, P-HOUSE).
PME
Families are Formed through Copulation
Humiliation and death of the best friend, an allegorical story in which a father, mother, and daughter rape each other, a man who suddenly “becomes” a “Jew” during his travel in Germany, a family therapy in the nuclear age, a computer’s voice preaching that we must not have children with tons of reasons. Following the experiment in Unrehearsed Beauty as a plain answer to the question “what theatre can do” in terms of content, this “theatrical” performance straightly depicts unjustifiedness (March 9-10, 2006, Tokyo Kinema Club).
chelfitsch
Three Days in March
“March 15, 2003, when the USA was about to start bombing on Iraq, I saw at Super Deluxe in Roppongi, with a fair amount of beer, a theatrical show from Montreal that looked like a political forum called Unrehearsed Beauty. Some said the performance was not worth serious consideration, but for me it was one of the very few performances that were really striking. To tell the truth, what made me write Three Days in March that was premiered in the next year’s February was the performance experience of that day. So I am very glad being able to show the piece at the SuperDeluxe in the festival that the group of Unrehearsed Beauty is in. Besides, a Japanese post-rock band Sangatsu [March], which was the source of the title, is going to play at the same venue in our performance period. I hope that audience will enjoy the piece and the band’s live concert relaxing, eating and drinking as I did with Unrehearsed Beauty. It has been three years since then, but the war on Iraq is still ongoing.” (Toshiki Okada, from the brochure of PPAF 2006, translated by Tomoyuki Arai. March 11-21, 2006, SuperDeluxe)
sim/Fuyuki Yamakawa/Aki Onda/OPTRUM/Doravideo/Daito Manabe (DJ)
“Spontaneous Core: Beyond the Performing Arts”
sim that was formed by guitarist Teruyuki Oshima under the keyword “gaps, slippage, and flickers between sound and sound,” Yamakawa who resolves his own body into light and sound with technologies such as medical equipments, Onda who “plays” materials that were recorded in the field with cassette tapes as a “ritual to evoke memories,” a light-and-sound hardcore band OPTRUM that utilizes amplified noise of fluorescent tubes, and Doravideo who remixes mass media themselves with drums that are synchronized with video devices. A showcase-style presentation of Japanese contemporary performance art (March 31, 2006, UNIT)
PPAF2003
Takao Kawaguchi
Night Colours
Solo and duo works of a creative member of dumb type / solo performer, Takao Kawaguchi: Night Colour, the complete version of his solo work that was premiered in 2001 produced by Grand Theatre Groningen, and new duo works in collaboration with the dancer Yuko Hirai and the composers / performers Sébastien Petit and Sébastien Szczyrk (February 27-28, 2003, Roppongi Hills Information Center / THINK ZONE).
Mayu Kanamori
The Heart of the Journey
Born in Broome, where used to be a famous pearl-producing town and many Japanese divers gathered, Lucy Dann was raised as an Aboriginal and now she is 40 years old. She founds that her biological father was Japanese, and asks Mayu Kanamori, a Japanese documentary photographer working in Australia, to accompany her first travel abroad to find the father, who should be living in Wakayama prefecture of Japan. This sound and slide show explores the multiculturality within Aboriginal peoples and shows how Lucy Dann discovers “personal reconciliation” supported by many “mediators” (March 6-7, 2003, Theatre Image Forum).
PME
Unrehearsed Beauty / Le Génie des autres
Except some reports of performers’ personal experiences such as labor at Dunkin’ Donuts or conversation with an American soldier, some yes-or-no questions, fragments of performances and several rock tunes, the whole space is given to audience “without rehearsal.” There is a microphone in the center of “audience seats” that they can use to fill the void, but it is all up to them. An experiment that transforms theatre into a kind of open forum and explores what the notion of “public space” can be today (March 13-15, 2003, SuperDeluxe).