NeANTA

Morishita Studio, Tokyo, 2013

We asked the dancer if he was interested in making a dance without dancing. His answer was, “For a dancer, it is the ultimate goal to make a dance without dancing.”
Eh Joe, Samuel Beckett’s TV drama, goes like this: A tired middle-age man hears a woman’s voice from somewhere, seemingly narrating a story about the man’s miserable life. She suggests she once had a relationship with the man. The voice speaks about the man’s shabby life, and tell the tale of the “Green Woman”, who, when dumped by him, killed herself by jumping into the sea. The man hears her voice and feels the gaze of the invisible dead woman. He looks frightened, but strangely happy, too, standing there quietly. Not a word he speaks. Only the transparent, female voice speaks, pressing him into a miserable corner. A depressing story, but it was surely a powerful scene in which the man’s body and expression were truly compelling. A story of the speechless man and the dead woman.

We looked for a man of few words capable of resisting the Beckettian depression, one who is funny and menacing at the same time. We found: Yamazaki Kota.

DIRECTED BY: Yasuki Fujita
TEXT COOPERATION: Shino Kuraishi
PERFORMED BY: Kota Yamazaki Tomoko Ando

STAGE MANAGER: Koro Suzuki
ASSISTANT STAGE MANAGER: Chikage Yuyama
LIGHTING DESIGNER : Takeaki Iwashina
SOUND DESIGNER : Yuji Tsutsumida
COSTUME DESIGNER : Yoko Ando
PROPS MASTER : Naoya Watabe
GRAPHIC DESIGNER : Yuri Suyama
PHOTOGRAPHER : Katsu Miyauchi
PRODUCER : Satoko Suchi