Experimental theatre in Tokyo

The Cultural Frontline

We go to Tokyo, where artists are creating theatre that interacts with the human body. At the experimental festival, Theater Commons Tokyo ‘21, the audience is centre stage and immersed in the action, even during a pandemic.

At Aya Momose’s Performing Acupuncture, needles turn the body into a stage. By combining art and therapy, she creates sensations which make us think about our body and relationships to one another. Using VR headsets, Meiro Koizumi takes us into the nightmares of Tokyo’s marginalised migrant workers. In this unsettling virtual space, we are transported into their pandemic experiences. And as the world adjusts to coronavirus, Akira Takayama and Port B use radio to transmit voices from Fukushima into the masked crowds of Tokyo streets. We are reminded of frightening contamination and radioactivity. A decade since the earthquake, and a year since the pandemic’s onset, both these stories are still unfolding.

Presenter: Kyoko Iwaki Producer: Alice Armstrong

(Photo: Theater Commons Tokyo '21. Credit: Shun Sato)