Divided by narrow passages forming a cross are two sets of the same things: it’s a mirror space, but there is no knowing if it’s outdoors or inside. It even looks like a multiplex balcony connected by a cross. The repetitive, obsessive scenery feels somewhat unsettling and perverted. Soon, a woman arrives, walking in a wobbly manner down the passage, as if strangely suspended in partial midair. Possibly disabled in speech, her words are difficult to discern. Then, the parrot from the ceiling translates for her. Having her legs and mouth substituted by the uncanny device and the speaking parrot, the woman barely manages to communicate her feelings bit by bit.
The text containing references from Chikamatsu Monzaemon’s classic Sonezaki Shinju (The Love Suicides at Sonezaki) portrays the hellish passion of a crazy, futile love affair, delivered by the woman alone mechanically and in fragments by means of her strange gestures and vocal manifestations which met with barely a response. This is, after all, a lonesome struggle.
Although totally battered and hardly coherent, her struggling movements and screaming voice desiring for another body, are a desperate search for means to see if the affair is an eternal or fleeting one, if it is unique or predictable, and if it is possible for one to reach for the other.

DIRECTED BY: Yasuki Fujita
TEXT AND CONCEPT BY : Shino Kuraishi
PERFORMED BY: Tomoko Ando
MUSIC COMPOSED AND PERFORMED BY : Itoken Osamu Saruyama Eijiro Takahashi
PROPS MASTER : Eijiro Takahashi (mechanical devices)
STAGE MANAGER: Koro Suzuki
LIGHTING DESIGNER : Takeaki Iwashina
SOUND DESIGNER : Yuichi Tanaka
COSTUME DESIGNER : Yoko Ando
PROPS MASTER : Naoya Watabe
GRAPHIC DESIGNER : Yuri Suyama
PHOTOGRAPHER : Katsu Miyauchi
PRODUCER : Satoko Suchi

Critic
LOVE IS BLIND, February 2012