Hot Pepper, Air Conditioner and The Farewell Speech
No more performances
pushfestival.ca
Gestural vocabulary is a new term for me but a concept that writer/director Toshiki Okada uses in a seriously funny way in this off-beat presentation by his Tokyo-based company, Cheltfitsch. It follows Marshall McLuhans dictum: the medium is the message. In this case, the body is the medium and the message is contained not only in the spoken word but also in the highly exaggerated gestures that betray the emotional turmoil behind the words. A woman, for example, upset about the air-conditioner in the office, converses casually with a colleague about it but as she does her body jerks and writhes as if the very words are causing her discomfort. A second woman in the office is worried about having to plan a farewell party for a laid-off temp. While her dialogue is calm, her movements are awkward, tentative and anxious. It looks a lot like dance. Repetitive dialogue in Japanese is translated and projected above the stage; the soundscape includes music by John Coltrane, Stereolab and John Cage.
Its a bit like eating sashimi for the first time: strange and unfamiliar. But it does grow on you, and the humour begins to come through. While its obvious that the six characters on stage are obsessing over ridiculously small concerns, what I didnt catch until I read the program notes was that this three-part creation speaks to young, disillusioned Japanese whose futures, rather than being promising and bright, are caught up in temporary employment in fluorescent-lit cubicles with the constant threat of being laid off.
Strangely hypnotic, this show comes from Japan where they definitely do theatre differently.
