Reviewed by:

• Metamorphosis of a Living Room (Ribingu Rūmu Metamoruflshizu)
• Beri Juraic

Renowned director and playwright Okada Toshiki needs no introduction. He is surely the main representative of contemporary Japanese theatre on the global stage. A lesser-known fact is that “eco-critical” performances have proliferated in Japan in the post-Fukushima period, including several of Okada’s productions. Many artists—such as Kamisato Yudai, Hagiwara Yuta’s Kamome Machine theatre company, and Matsui Shū—have been re-thinking environmental disasters in their own unique ways. In Okada’s recent work, the catastrophes of the Anthropocene are often problematized through playing with absence and presence—from stages filled with objects that seemingly communicate with or against the performers and disregard the audience (Eraser Mountain, 2019), to video screens placed into theatre and exhibitions spaces without performers at all (New-Illusion, 2022).

Metamorphosis of a Living Room (Ribingu Rūmu Metamorufōshizu), Okada’s latest piece with his chelfitsch theatre company, in collaboration with London-based Japanese composer Dai Fujikura and the Klangforum Wien ensemble, continued this exploration of the Anthropocene. The topic of climate change nevertheless arose in a more human form, with six actors and seven musicians who seamlessly [End Page 567] recited and dialogued with Okada’s poetic text about a looming disaster. There was also an underlying sense of satire about the nature of theatre-making internationally. I watched the performance at Amsterdam’s Holland Festival during its initial tour; another notable stop was at Austria’s Wiener Festwochen, which commissioned the work.

Music and theatre collide with stage poetry in Metamorphosis of a Living Room. Photo: Nurith Wagner Strauss.

The performance started in medias res, in the living room of an extended family during a torrential downpour. Scenography by Okada’s regular collaborators, dot architects, was quite simple, consisting of bare wooden structures with a couple of colorful props thrown in. As the family members bickered about who forgot to bring in the blankets drying outside, they received notice that they were being evicted from their rented apartment. The eldest daughter (Aoyagi Izumi) informed the rest of the family that this was illegal and proceeded to write and read aloud a very funny letter to the landlord, using ultra-polite Japanese. However, this was probably lost on the non-Japanese speaking audience who relied on projected supertitles. It is a pity because Okada is often associated with the use of hyper-colloquial Japanese and this scene was certainly a departure from that.

Since Japan imposed significant restrictions on travel during the COVID-19 pandemic, Metamorphosis of a Living Room was initially rehearsed remotely with Fujikura sending music files from his living room in London. Okada and Fujikura set out to create an entirely new performance style where music and theatre could exist independently from one another on stage. Fujikura’s compositions, played by musicians seated in a semi-circle under the proscenium with actors behind them, were the crucial driver of the narrative, as they played with and commented on the performers’ actions and lines—just like a Greek chorus. As soon as the performers mentioned rain, for example, they created a beautiful and mysterious rain sound. At other times, the music worked more independently by going against the grain of the performers’ actions on stage, especially when there was less dialogue and more movement. In spite of their intentions, the two collaborators never quite succeeded in creating something new. The attempted separation of the performers’ voices and gestures from the music is arguably a re-working of classical Japanese theatre aesthetics that veer towards the separation of performative elements.

As the performance progressed, a man (Ohmura Wataru) showed up in the garden covered in black [End Page 568] slime, reminiscent of the monster in Edward Bond’s Red Black and Ignorant and the contemporary figure of a climate migrant. From this moment onward, the stage slowly transformed into a strange world inhabited by bizarre colors. The...

审阅者：

• 客厅的变形 (Ribingu Rūmu Metamoruflshizu)
• 贝里·尤拉克

著名导演兼剧作家冈田俊树无需介绍。他无疑是当代日本戏剧在全球舞台上的主要代表。一个鲜为人知的事实是，福岛后时期，“生态批判”表演在日本激增，其中包括冈田的几部作品。许多艺术家——例如上里雄大、萩原雄太的海鸥机器剧场公司和松井秀——一直在以自己独特的方式重新思考环境灾难。在冈田最近的作品中，人类世的灾难经常通过缺席和在场的演奏来解决问题——从充满看似与表演者交流或反对表演者并无视观众的物体的舞台（《橡皮山》，2019），到放置在剧院中的视频屏幕以及根本没有表演者的展览空间（New-Illusion，2022）。

《客厅的变形》（Ribingu Rūmu Metamorufōshizu）是冈田与他的切尔菲奇剧院公司合作的最新作品，与伦敦的日本作曲家藤仓大和维也纳 Klangforum 乐团合作，继续了对人类世的探索。然而，气候变化的话题以更人性化的形式出现，六位演员和七位音乐家无缝地[结束第567页]背诵了冈田关于迫在眉睫的灾难的诗意文本并与之对话。对于国际戏剧制作的本质也存在着一种潜在的讽刺感。我在阿姆斯特丹荷兰音乐节首次巡演期间观看了演出；另一个值得注意的地方是委托委托制作这项作品的奥地利维也纳音乐节 (Wiener Festwochen)。

在《客厅的变形记》中，音乐和戏剧与舞台诗歌发生了碰撞。照片：努里斯·瓦格纳·施特劳斯。

表演在倾盆大雨中在一个大家庭的客厅里的媒体资源中开始。冈田的经常合作者，点建筑师，场景设计非常简单，由裸露的木结构和一些彩色道具组成。当家人为谁忘了把在外面晾干的毯子带进来而争吵时，他们收到通知说他们正在被被逐出租来的公寓。大女儿（青柳泉饰）告诉家里其他人这是违法的，并用极其礼貌的日语写了一封非常有趣的信给​​房东，并大声朗读。然而，依赖投影字幕的非日语观众可能会忽视这一点。遗憾的是，冈田经常与超口语日语的使用联系在一起，而这个场景显然与此背道而驰。

由于日本在 COVID-19 大流行期间对旅行实施了严格的限制，《客厅的变形》最初是由藤仓从他位于伦敦的客厅发送音乐文件进行远程排练的。冈田和藤仓着手创造一种全新的表演风格，让音乐和戏剧可以在舞台上独立存在。藤仓的作品由坐在舞台下半圆形的音乐家演奏，演员在他们身后，他们演奏并评论表演者的动作和台词，就像希腊合唱团一样，是叙事的关键驱动力。例如，表演者一提到雨，就创造出优美而神秘的雨声。在其他时候，音乐通过与表演者在舞台上的动作相反的方式更加独立地发挥作用，特别是当对话较少而动作较多时。尽管有这样的意图，但这两位合作者从未成功地创造出新的东西。将表演者的声音和手势与音乐分离的尝试可以说是对日本古典戏剧美学的重新演绎，这种美学转向了表演元素的分离。

随着表演的进行，一名男子（大村渡饰）出现在花园里，浑身是黑色[完第568页]粘液，让人想起爱德华·邦德的《红黑与无知》中的怪物和气候移民的当代形象。从这一刻起，舞台慢慢变成了一个充满奇异色彩的奇异世界。这...