art for art’s sake

Monday night I went to see a small theatre production, hidden away in the back alleys of Ueno – the kind of venue you could never accidently stumble upon, and that you would only find by pure chance even if you were searching for it (the odds made slightly easier by a girl standing out in the rain pointing people into the basement). A friend of mine was acting in the play, a multi talented actor director writer who you probably won’t recognize from his 1 second of screen time as an extra in The Last Samurai. In fact he deserves far greater fame than that, not only when acting in other people’s shows but also in his own productions with his company “Nagi Pro” – mostly comedy sketches and if you ever want a bit of quality amusement I thoroughly recommend his shows (in Japanese). http://www.nagi-pro.com/

So the play I saw was amazingly well scripted, acted and directed. It is hard to explain here and do it justice, but the story was about simultaneous interpreters at a police interrogation who each understood only half of the dialogue, with the other sounding like gibberish. The story featured two groups of interpreters, one of whom would hear gibberish when the police spoke, the other hearing nonsense when the accused spoke. The scene would be acted out with one side of the story being “voiced”, the other half in silence, and then the scene would be repeated from the alternative perspective with the other group “voiced” while the first group acted out in silence the scene they had just done out loud. In the first take the audience would see the police talking normally but the accused blabbering nonsensical noises. The scene would play again with it completely reversed. Sound confusing? Yeeeaaaahh well it all makes (kind of) sense on stage, and I thoroughly recommend it to anyone.... it was called 笑う通訳者 and this run finished today. Maybe there will be a repeat showing in the future? It would be great to see someone do this in English one day too.

Needless to say, the acting skills it took (and the writing and directing!) to pull off a play of this complexity blew me away. It was clever and funny and one of the most entertaining things I have seen in a long time (granted, my standards would have been lowered a little after sitting through A Good Day to Die Hard the previous day). And all in a small theatre out of the way in Ueno, to an audience of maybe 40 people. This little theatre group surely does not make a profit, and might even be operating at a loss. The same can be said for a hundred other theatre groups in Tokyo, a thousand musicians and other artists in this city. How many geniuses there must be living in anonymous poverty. So why do they keep doing it?

I think I have quoted Walter Pater before in this blog, “For art comes to you proposing frankly to give nothing but the highest quality of your moments as they pass, and simply for these moments sake”. Sure, some people are in it for socio-political reasons, a small number (I would hope very small) might be in it for the wish to be famous (let’s not confuse a desire for fame with a desire for recognition; any artist seeks appreciation of his work and money & fame is one obvious measurement of this). But I genuinely think most people I know in this “art” game are in it because of the joy it brings in those moments of the highest quality – and last night I was fortunate to share that with a handful of people; some on the stage, some behind the scenes, some in the audience. Each element essential for the performance to work.

Working full time, it can be hard to find time on a Monday night to get out to see a friend and their theatre group, magic show, rock band or whatever. But it is overwhelmingly worth it – in the worst case scenario your friend is delighted you came, whereas best case scenario, on a good day you might stumble upon a real gem of entertainment that will possibly never be repeated, a quality moment shared only by those people in that room on that day.

Our next show is Saturday, February 23^rd, at Asagaya Gamuso. I hope that in some way we can make this, and each of our shows, moments that the audience would feel pleased to have been a part of, if only it be for that moment’s sake. And if you want another moment, buy our album (hah).

p.s. just got the new nick cave record. love jubilee street, mermaids sounds lovely on first listen. higgs boson blues is a great tune but im not sure what that bit about fucking miley cyrus is all about... will need a few more listens to the record as a whole to make any judgment.