Pappa TARAHUMARA [2008]
Stage Design Interacting with Performance
Kenji Yanobe inducted as the first director of ULTRA FACTORY, a 3D modeling studio and a multi-disciplinary educational institution established in June of 2008. He has launched various Ultra Projects operated by artists active in various fields. He believes that these projects would serve as best educational opportunities for students.
At the time of induction, it was already planned that he would join as a stage designer for the new work of Pappa TARAHUMARA. Pappa TARAHUMARA is a performing arts group established by Hiroshi Koike in 1982. The group is known for the innovative stage performance adapting various form of arts such as music, art and moving images.
The performances are mergence of theatre arts, dance, musical and mime and their performances had gained prestige internationally.Koike had long been planning to make a stage work, modeled on Jonathan Swift, a British writer of 18th century famous for his satirical novel Gulliver’s Travels (1726) but not realized yet then. Koike visited Yanobe’s exhibition and he found the common character between Swift and Yanobe, both of them expressed the contradictions of civilized society as stories full of humor and irony. Koike asked Yanobe to design his stage and decided to realize his plan.
Yanobe thought that to commit the stage design of Pappa TARAHUMARA as the first Ultra Project is the best way to draw out the potential of ULTRA FACTORY. Both Pappa TARAHUMARA and ULTRA FACTORY are multi diciplinary in character. The working process of Yanobe and Koike was not limited to the dialogue between them. Yanobe, together with his students, joined the workshop of body expression and absorbed the methods of stage art and gradually made plans for the stage. Koike, on the other hand, seeing the sketches that Yanobe offered him and took the ideas from the stage design into his stage direction. They collaborated in creative way with each other.
Yanobe created various unique characters such as Cat Doll, Child Doll, Huge Child Doll, Dismantling Courtesan, Suit Man and Sphere Capsule for the stage. They were to serve as the parts of the story and at the same time they must be functional for the performers. They are both Yanobe’s works and hybrid creatures born out from different worlds. The performers and stage design interacted with each other and the characters sometimes made strong impression during the performance.
On the stage, various elements of different cultures such as dancers from Indonesia and Ireland, players of Electronic organ and gamelan, masks, objects, and costumes, intermingled with each other. All of them formed the hybrid stage work Gulliver & Swift—Writer Jonathan Swift’s Cat Cooking Recipes—which embodied the imagination of Jonathan Swift bridging over different spaces and times, dimensions and genres in daring ways.
ULTRA FACTORY showed the process of making as a work in progress to the public and the rehearsal performance was taken place at Kyoto Art Theater Shunjuza, a theater of Kyoto University of the Arts. The performance was a crossover of two artists; Yanobe turns reality into story through his art works and Koike turns stories into reality through his stage work. Yanobe made the stage design for four months with students and this experience formed the basic knowhow to manage and operate the projects in ULTRA FACTORY.
*Pappa TARAHUMARA ended their 30 years of activities in June of 2012.
