让戏剧在各个角落发生

Staging Drama in Unexpected Places

What is the relationship between depot and street, theatrical an real space in our working method?

In recent years, I have started creating theater in outdoor and public environments. Creating

theater in such spaces feels like a painter placing the stone they painted on a canvas next to

a real stone in the environment, initiating an energetic interplay between the two. When the

painted stone is placed next to the original stone, it is both that stone and not that stone.If we were to paint the stone to look exactly like the real one, it would never surpass the

richness of the natural stone. The relationship between theater and real spaces is similar to

that between the painted stone and the natural stone. The painted stone must be refined, not

merely a copy of the natural one. The scenes and characters processed through theater

should be something to be contemplated. They should not just be a passing glance on a

street corner or a taken-for-granted presence, but should have a sense of appropriate

surprise.

Regarding settings, whether it’s a bus station, a street, a hospital, or a casino, each is simply

a place. These places, to me, are not objects to imitate. The chosen real spaces in a

theatrical activity must be extended, not merely treated as an objective environment.

Years ago, I often dined at a casino restaurant in New Zealand, observing the diverse

gamblers who came and went each day: people with Tourette syndrome, elderly people

pushed in wheelchairs by caregivers with casino cards hanging around their necks, lingering

daily at the slot machines, housewives who brought their groceries from the market for a

quick gamble, and impeccably dressed men in suits, whose thinning hair and pale

complexions suggested they had rarely left the room. Amid the clamor of the slot machines, it

suddenly occurred to me that staging Don Quixote in a casino might be a great idea. After

all, aren’t all these varied people, with their passions and hopes, modern-day romantic

knights? In this context, the casino becomes a symbolic theatrical world for Don Quixote’s

adventures.

At bus stations, streets, hospitals, and casinos, events are always unfolding. One could call

them dramatic, but they are not theater. When actual theater happens in such a real space,

the theatrical event in that environment should feel to the audience like the entirety of this

world. It demands to be contemplated.