Notes from Rehearsals for Soko ni Tatsu [Standing There]
Between Hitogoto Arts Collective and Me

By Kenyu Paku

A Rocky Train-ride

It’s similar to a scene in which passengers are moving about in a crowded train. By following Ms. Yamashita instructions, our movements started to become more realistic. Our bodies comes across more realistically whenever we move forward with our feet firmly planted on the ground, rather than going through the motions of pushing our way through the other passengers. I thought to myself that's a good point! Here are my personal impressions of what followed. Though we somehow convey physical movement as one whole, when moving from our body trunk, it looks like we’re doing so deliberately. This is because the train’s jolting impact on our bodies arises from two opposing forces: between the train’s forward propulsion and our physical efforts in striving to stand steady.

[...]

Next up, another scene. Passengers on a moving train are standing about and talking. In this scene, we're focusing on how the body sways back and forth. We did an experiment in which we tried a normal sway, rocking back and forth at a 10% angle, and then tried several with a greater sway of 20%. We fixed the timing for the 20% sway. On doing so, however, everybody's movements were too synchronized, and it became a bit laboured in the bad sense of the word. It was quite challenging. Ms. Yamashita then made some adjustments to how we, the supposed passengers, interacted on a verbal level. Somewhat frightened, one passenger lowers his voice while his body slightly tenses up, another is constantly tension-free, and yet another tightens his muscles and puts in a lot of effort at the most assertive points when he gets excited while talking. It's now starting to look as though it’s taking shape. On mentioning how I was concerned about the swaying shoulders of the passenger sitting behind them, Ms Yamashita said that person, too, was rocking about quite a bit. I then decided that I would check out how passenger’s bodies interact on my commuter train ride the next day. Another thing to observe carefully: How loud do people talk on a train? During rehearsals, the actors were talking rather loudly and I didn't feel that they were paying much attention to their surroundings. During rehearsals and during feedback with Ms. Yamashita, the actors were playing around with their smartphones and their movements never came across as contrived. It's fascinating to observe how this sense of continuity between performance and reality unfolds. I wonder where the divergences and similarities are to be found in such circumstances.

Toward the end of practice, we rehearsed a dance scene. Here, too, we had to come up with movements for a crowded train. In the beginning, four of us worked together as a group and tried out varying degrees of swaying back and forth, ranging from 10% to 100%. Thereafter, each of us tried out varying the angle of our swaying movements and attempting more expansive movements whenever we felt like it. Ms. Yamashita explained how there are three essential elements to movement: physical force, speed, and gravity, and she accordingly adjusted these three elements in each of the actors' movements. After forming pairs, we started to push each other about and sought to copy each other's movements, as though three people were imitating somebody’s movements at some kind of self-help seminar. We then formed a straight line and imitated each other's movements; this turned into a wave. The differences were clearer whenever we started copying each other's movements rather than when pushing each other about. What was particularly obvious was how everybody’s angularity and degree of looseness differed. I wonder whether the key to this dance is how to fuse these two elements. That’s how we wrapped up today's rehearsal.

[…]

The next morning, I tried focusing my senses on my physical responses compared with those of the other train commuters on their way to work. The timing for how everybody swayed was more uneven than I’d expected, for they didn’t sway in unison. We rock from back and forth on a moving train because we’re directly impacted by the train's forward motion. If we analyse this movement, we discover three determining factors: first, the direction in which the train is moving; it stops and starts over and again, and its speed constantly varies. Second, the left to right horizontal sway on account of inertia, for we tend to lean in the same direction as the train does. And finally, those vertical jolts up and down, whenever a train abruptly breaks. This probably created that rattling sound, I think.

Looked around me on the train, I could see how people's hands revealed their individuality. Most commuters are looking at or playing with their phones, some are reading, while some are doing nothing. How commuters grip the straphangers differs from one person to the next. The following is how I classified my fellow passengers, in order of the number of people.

  • a) The group that grasps the bottom of the straphangers was the largest faction. I count myself among them.
  • b) Those who grip the upper part of the straphanger. More commuters did this than I would have expected.
  • c) Those who grip the metal bar above the straphanger. This occurs if there’s no strap to latch onto. I, too, sometimes do that.
  • d) Those who thread their wrist through the handle or the loop. It would never dawn on me to do this, but if you closely observe, you'll see this happening occasionally.

The excerpt is from Kenyu Paku’s “Notes from Rehearsals for Soko ni Tatsu 1 [Standing There]: Between Hitogoto Arts Collective and Me,” which was written and directed by Emi Yamashita (2018).
https://note.com/hitogoto_maru/n/n3a46b5366d0d?magazine_key=m737c3dc068ed

Translation: John Barrett

Kenyu Paku

Born in 1991. Completed a master’s course at the Graduate School of Language and Culture, Osaka University. Paku is interested in activating those individual strengths that can arise during various conflicts situations which inevitably occur in the planning, production, creative process and audience reception of performing arts, as well as the description of space and physical expression as a reciprocal movement of intellect and sensibility and involved primarily as a dramaturg in producing various performing arts. He is also interested in rethinking acting/theatre as a space for stimulating diversity based on fiction, and in setting up theatres that are not buildings, in various locations. He is the secretary-general of the Komaba Agora Directors’ Competition 2018 Executive Committee. In 2018, he was awarded top prize in the play review competition at the Fuji-no-kuni⇄Sekai Theatre Festival.

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