Shun-kin is played by a Japanese cast in the original language, merging western dramatic conventions with Japanese theatre traditions. Let’s face it, it’s annoying to be asked to read surtitles during a performance, especially if the work is a visual piece by a British company. Is Complicité being pretentious here? My answer is no. Indeed, in the first half hour it’s difficult to keep up with reading and watching at the same time. The narrative isn’t simple and the surtitles are placed at the two sides of the stage, so one can only do one thing at a time: either read or watch the performance. But this mechanism builds up an alienating distance between the audience and the play, which makes what happens on stage mythical and otherworldly: it simply makes it more magic.

If you think about it, the story of Shun-kin and Sasuke is virtually untranslatable, like signatures and proper names. It is so closely connected to Japanese culture that it would become a completely different thing in translation. Among sliding doors and caged singing birds, shamisen and kimonos, this love story of sheer self-denial and blind self-affirmation happened in Japanese and it can only be told in the same language, with its rhythm, cadences and musicality.

A contemporary narrative frame (already in Tanizaki’s book, but perhaps not the most successful aspect of the show) and the use of Japanese Bunraku puppets implement the estrangement effect. As the story progresses, the blind protagonist slowly becomes a flesh-and-blood woman: first, as a young girl, she is embodied by a puppet controlled by no less than three women puppeteers, who are always oddly around when she attends her secret encounters with Sasuke, moving her limbs as though she were a living creature and giving her a strident, petulant voice. Then, as a young lady, she is played by a woman wearing a neutral mask, but still restrained by the puppeteers; lastly, the main puppeteer transforms herself into Shunkin. A journey towards a shameful desire makes Shunkin human – and condemns her to even more humiliating suffering.

There are moments of pure poetry in this show, such as when Shunkin (still a puppet) and Sasuke first have sex, when she gives birth to their first child, and when Sasuke blinds himself. Everything takes place on a dimly-lit stage, where a shady ambiguity mesmerises our imagination much more than clarity.

Is this wild orientalism? I see this as an attempt to explore difference from within, to embody it. But it would be interesting to hear what other people have to say about Shun-Kin.

In search of a new theatre

Portrait of Meyerhold.

In the early 1900s Meyerhold was still involved with symbolist drama but had begun to experiment with specific elements of the stage; improvising with the proscenium and playing with light. In his production of Alexander Blok’s The Fairground Booth in 1906, he put some of his new techniques to test. The simple but archaic theatre included elements of the Italian Commedia dell’Arte, traditional Japanese theatre and characteristics of the old theatres of Spain and England. The most significant development was Meyerhold’s use of a theatre within the theatre, demonstrating the potential of a deliberate display of theatrical illusion. The scenery was non-realistic and sets were raised and lowered in full view of the audience. The Fairground Booth enabled Meyerhold to explore a form which challenged the theatrical conventions from inside the dominant symbolist framework of the day.

The beginnings of Biomechanics

The production of Mikhail Lermontov’s play Masquerade marked a significant step in the development of Meyerhold’s ideas. The decor of the production by Alexander Golovin was designed as an emotional codex which would reflect and in many cases set the mood or atmosphere of the play as it progressed through its various stages. The colours of the curtains and backdrops were designed to lead the viewer from one stage of the production to another so that it became an intricate part of the actors’ performances on stage – highlighting and emphasising their emotional content and psychology. The rising and falling of curtains was not simply a device for opening and closing an act, their graphic input became part of the dramatic process and helped develop the action of the play itself.

The curtains in Masquerade.

To use a musical analogy, the curtains were meant to play the role of an overture with additional orchestral interludes. This was the beginning of breaking up the hierarchy in Russian text-based theatre. Here the abstract graphic element of set design began to play a more equal role in the production as a whole and with this the first seeds were sown of a new acting technique which Meyerhold would name ‘Biomechanics’.

The influence of Constructivist design

Meyerhold’s production of The Magnanimous Cuckold became his boldest experiment in this process. Meyerhold was already developing the acting technique of Biomechanics, a series of exercises to develop and release the emotional potential of the actor through movement. He enlisted Lubov Popova to design a set for the performance. The result was a machine-like moving structure with platforms and whirling wheels against a plain curtain backdrop. The actors’ performances formed a dynamic, pulsating spectacle, moving in unison and integrated with the rhythmic movement of Popova’s constructivist structure. The result was an organic unity on stage between actor and set.

The Man Who Was Thursday Set Drawing.

This production sparked a trend in collaborations with constructivist artists to design theatre sets. The most well known was Alexander Tairov’s production of G.K. Chesterton’s The Man who was Thursday designed by the artist Alexander Vesin. He built a structure with lifts and moving walkways which, it would seem, befitted Chesterton’s literary creation. However the set itself was a disappointment. In many cases it appeared clumsy and actors found it difficult to perform within Vesin’s labyrinth-like and reputedly cumbersome design. Part of the reason why Vesin’s design did not succeed as intended is because the implications of Meyerhold’s innovations had not been entirely understood. The structure was abstract and constructivist in character, but it was also a fairly concrete object and in some sense representational and functional. It was a space in which actors could interact with each other and a world which bore resemblances to emerging forms of the time. In some sense a return to naturalism, albeit of a contemporary or constructivist/urban/industrialist character.

Popova’s Machine

Popova’s machine was completely different in character. It was machine-like but far from the common structures of the day. In present day terms we might refer to it as an installation. It was abstract, it blurred meaning, and had no function other than to be an object in the production. This suited Meyerhold’s desire for the crossing and re-crossing of the borders between tragedy and comedy, pathos and farce and hence embodied his experimentation with theatrical form.

Popova's Machine in production.

The blurring and crossing of borders can be found in Japanese artistic and theatrical forms; as can the emptiness of the stage which like a monotone Japanese landscape painting depends on what is taken out, giving the audience a chance to use their own imagination to fill the void. In this sense, while wanting to stimulate and lead an audience, Meyerhold did not want to control their emotions.

Popova's Machine poster.

Meyerhold’s interest in Japan

To further understand these developments in Russian theatre, it’s important to note Meyerhold’s interest in the traditional performing arts of Japan, particularly Kabuki and Noh. One of the principal characteristics of Noh, and a paradox in a theatre of masks, is that the theatrical process is “unmasked” in full view of the audience. Stage technology is revealed and incorporated into the “work of art”, so that the process becomes an important medium for preserving and relaying information about the play.

Scene from a Noh theatre production of Okina Hōnō.

This appealed to Meyerhold who proceeded to turn his theatre inside out, rejecting the play as an art form wholly based on text. The theatre that Meyerhold wanted demanded a new type of actor with a new style of acting, and Kabuki with its emphasis on dance and physical movement served Meyerhold’s purposes well. The rhythm of dance was important to the futurists and avant-garde artists because through rhythm a new life could be presented and a new type of person would embody this rhythm for a new future era where movement speed and dynamism were optimum. Biomechanics with its visual/graphic potential was meant to be a living synthesis of this transformation.

A ‘return’ to classical drama?

By the time Meyerhold put on his version of The Government Inspector it was heralded by the authorities as Meyerhold’s return to classical drama. Lunacharsky, Commissar of Enlightenment (Narkompros) had earlier criticised Meyerhold’s experiments but welcomed Meyerhold’s return to traditional theatre. However, looking at the photographs and designs of this production the innovations which Meyerhold had pioneered were still apparent. Meyerhold had not abandoned his experiments and they continued to inform his work as much as before. As he himself commented, “Just because we are not rushing about the stage waving red flags does not mean that theatre is not revolutionary”.

Mannequins in the making.

Moreover the revolutionary quality of the production was borne out with Meyerhold borrowing techniques from cinema. In some scenes, several events take place simultaneously and the action spills over from one side of the stage into the other in a torrent of movement uncharacteristic of earlier classical productions. Meyerhold went even further. In the final scene where actors are required to freeze in still poses to dramatise the ossified and static nature of the world portrayed in the production, Meyerhold substituted the actors with specially designed mannequins.

Mannequins in Meyerhold's production of The Government Inspector.

The graphic quality is unmistakable with echoes from Bunraku (puppet theatre of Japan) puppets and the dramatic poses or mie of Kabuki actors. Meyerhold’s vision was bold and radical in its strong integration of the graphic component into the production and emphasises his ability to transcend the boundaries of theatrical form. In this case, instead of real people playing the role of frozen mannequins, real mannequins played the role of people. Whatever Meyerhold’s intention, watching rows of lifelike figures gaze into the auditorium, transformed like idols from an another era, must have made for an eerie climax.

It is a shame, for theatre lovers in general, and fans of Japanese theatre in particular, that Hiroshima is such a long way from anywhere. Even within the country, this vibrant city of more than one million people is sufficiently removed from Tokyo, Kyoto and other major centers that it receives negligible press, outside the realm of car exports, agricultural production, and peace studies. Yet, if theatre critics were willing to take the road less traveled (or the bullet train in this case), they would discover a vibrant and sophisticated re-imagining of one of the oldest performance traditions in the world.

Kagura is an artistic expression of the Shinto religion. In Japanese, the term is written with two ideograms, suggesting the concepts of “God(s)” and “Entertainment”. Kagura performers take their inspiration from the myth of the loss and recovery of the Sun Goddess: Shinto texts dating back more than a thousand years describe how the Patron Goddess of Dancers lured the Sun out of a rock cave by creating an impromptu stage from an overturned wash basin, and bearing it all in a bawdy and provocative display. The Myriad Gods were provoked to laugher, and when the Sun Goddess peered out to see what all the fuss was about, light and warmth were restored to the universe.

The paradigm for Kagura is thus socially-motivated physical entertainment, with recognition of spiritual forces as audience. This template is flexible enough to have endured for a millennium, while renewing itself in countless variations. Some contemporary forms are essentially “pure” dance, with choreography based on long-forgotten principles of spatial mysticism. Other Kagura are more operatic, combining mime, recitatives, and mythological storytelling. An official court-sanctioned version was established in the Japanese Middle Ages and has continued with virtually no changes to present. There are also three major unofficial styles, incorporating local legends and folk deities, as well as acrobatics, Chinese lion dances, processional elements, and more recently, stagecraft from the conventional theatre.

“Hiroshima-style” Kagura is perhaps the hippest, most secular, crowd-pleasing style of Shinto performance in the country. This art is epitomized by the taikai, a semi-annual gathering of actors from all over west-central Japan. Taikai combine elements of both western fringe theatre and the theatre sports motif. Each troupe is given forty minutes or so to present a classical mythological story, a quasi-contemporary 19th or 20th century play, or a completely new work. Most of the presentations consist of a two-act dance/drama fueled by an epic confrontation between the forces of good and evil. The lyrics are arcane, but the boom of the taiko drums is accessible to everyone. So too is the surreal atmosphere, which relies on judicious use of dry ice, fireworks, and other imports from the Kabuki stage. Most of the performers are technically amateurs, although this is hard to believe given the dedication to their craft. The choreography is fast-paced and meticulous, right down to the synchronization of wrist and finger movements. The dances also carry an element of danger, particularly when hero and villain spar with javelins, daggers, or broadswords.

The taikai is an opportunity for excellence, and an illustration of how heritage can retain its relevance even in an ostensibly urban setting. The day-long event is well-attended by a net-savvy fan base, who blog between conventions, share trivia and memorabilia, and cheer on their “home town” favorites with the kind of fervor one would expect at a rock concert. The audience also includes a panel of experts, who provide each troupe with feedback on their costumes, masks, special effects, and dance technique. And some would say that the kami (spirits) are in attendance as well, particularly during the highest-energy passages.

Hiroshima taikai became my entry point into “Kagura culture” during a four-year stay in the city. After a few such gatherings, I was hooked, and began traveling to rural townships on the weekends, attending more homespun agricultural performances, and learning the tricks of the trade through discussions with troupe leaders. Eventually, I ended up several hundred kilometers to the northeast, at the start of what is known locally as the Kagura Trail.

Ground Zero turns out to consist of two important Shinto shrines. One established the regional focus on theatricality through exchanges with Kyoto, the performance capital of the Japan, during the 17th century. (Intriguingly, this is the same shrine from which Izumo-no-Okuni, the founder of Kabuki, made her way east a century or so earlier.) And the neighboring shine was the first to apply the techniques of the Noh stage as the basis for an overnight performance marathon, a step that became the template for Kagura throughout this part of the country.

There is no doubt that the very public process of artistic competition has taken Hiroshima Kagura in a distinctive direction. A sense of disapproval is tangible at some of the more traditional performances in nearby townships. Village Kagura is “true” Kagura, I have been told, not the flashy, Kabuki-esque spectacle found in the big city. Certainly it could be argued that in honing their crowd-pleasing technique, Hiroshima performers have lost touch with the recognition of spiritual forces that has always defined Shinto theatre. And yet the palpable sense of community that both nurtures and is nurtured by this art form is also surely a “spirit” worth recognizing.

In January 2005, just like in October 2006, the world was still ticking to the beat of the White House; the Iraqi people were said to have taken their “[…] first step towards joining the free world and being a democracy […]”[1] through governmental elections just a few days before[2]; “the armies of darkness”[3] still carry out quasi-daily attacks on ‘coalition forces’ stationed in Iraq (including members of the Japanese ‘Self-Defence Force’); an “axis of evil”[4], albeit down by one member, simmers on the world’s back burner waiting for the US and UN’s next move; and “In Japan, [like most ‘1st world’ nations] television is king– people turn to it more than any other medium for news and entertainment”[5].

The first time I saw the Al-Murwass promotional flyer (Japanese version) was about a month before the 19-strong company actually set foot on Japanese soil. I believe they were still rehearsing in Baghdad at that time and when not rehearsing, they were dealing with the daily logistical problems that a war inflicts on the general population: problems of transport, food, money, security and an environment of fear and anxiety. Of the flyer I don’t remember much, unfortunately my reading ability in Japanese was not sufficient to understand all of the written information at that time, but I do remember four illustrative photos. The first was the image of a man playing a traditional ney flute in front of the Iraqi national flag. The second and third showed the company dancing in what appeared to be traditional clothing, and the last photo displayed a goatskin drum. I found out later on that the drum was the emblem of the company and the meaning behind the name ‘Al-Murwass’.

Also around that time, I was following the continual flow of media imagery and rhetoric through television and online press, from sources such as BBC World, CNN, BBC News online, The Japan Times, Le Monde and other agencies. The picture being painted at the time was similar to the one now: a sense of unrelenting extremism and violence in everyday Iraqi life held up against a backdrop of a widespread ‘war on terror’, a war that began shortly after September 11th 2001 with the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in ‘search’ of Osama Bin Laden, and one that continues now in 2006.

This combination of mediatized war imagery (suicide bombs, US military interventions, hostage taking, anti-terrorism laws, untried prison sentences, Islamic fundamentalism etc.) and ‘Western’ political discourse placed the images on the Al-Murwass flyer in a negative context and triggered a preemptory Al-Murwass performance; not a performance in any physical capacity but one that took place on an ‘invisible stage’: the stage of the mind. Then, in February 2005, I got to see the actual show at the Tiny Alice theatre with a real cast, real musicians, costumes, voices, singing and dancing bodies and not once was the war mentioned.

In the following paragraphs I will explore how and why I constructed this ‘invisible stage’ and what relevance this has to perceptions of Iraq today.

Thinking about the media in all it’s different forms and applications (television, the Internet, printed material – newspapers, magazines, the performance flyer and many others), I tried to understand where my ‘invisible stage’ fits in. This led me to question my position as ‘receiver’ of information and how to determine its reliability. What if I, as the consumer of these media presentations, am forming an adverse judgment or opinion without knowledge or examination of the facts because I am not ‘able’, or more precisely, not ‘willing’ to experience the situations first hand? In the documentary War Photographer, about the work of photo journalist James Nachtwey, there is a passage of personal commentary that sheds some light on this question of personal prejudice:

“In the field what you experience is extremely immediate, what you see is not an image on a page in a magazine 10,000 miles away with an advertisement for Rolex watches on the next page. What you see is unmitigated pain, injustice and misery. It’s occurred to me that if everyone could be there just once to see for themselves what white phosphorous does to the face of a child or what unspeakable pain is caused by the impact of a bullet or how a jagged piece of shrapnel can rip someone’s leg off. If everyone could be there to see for themselves the fear and the grief just one time then they would understand that nothing is worth letting things get to the point where that happens to even one person let alone thousands.” (Nachtwey/Frei, 2001)

These words come from the source of image-based media itself, and Nachtwey is disclosing part of the dilemma in his work here. The photograph and the moving image can only go so far in their portrayal of ‘reality’. The distancing that viewers experience between the image and the action it portrays is the space where prejudice begins to breed and proliferate. Not even after being personally subject to numerous acts of prejudice, not even after battling against prejudice directed towards others, and not even after being brought up surrounded by a pantheon of prejudice-fighting heroes, Ghandi, Biko, Mandela, King or Levi, am I immune to its existence. Because as the footprint of global Western media widens and incites more people to consume it, the impetus to examine the reality of others is increasingly taken away from us. The distancing between image and reality has almost become an innate factor, part of our modern social DNA, and the more the image tries to go deeper into its portrayal of reality the more we seek shelter from it and turn to media’s entertainment branch: a no man’s land without moral ground where prejudice roams free.

I therefore hold myself to blame for the creation of this ‘invisible stage’. I consumed the images. I did not make the effort to look beyond the overall picture of prejudice they formed. But to recognise and accept personal blame for this ‘invisible stage’ does not push the issue any further in my mind; to understand the influence of media with more depth one needs to look at its mechanics (form and constitution).

The face of today’s digital media has yet to fully materialize, becasue like the technology it relies on, the speed of change is incredibly fast. So the way we interact with media is an ongoing process of adaptation. Media is also becoming very close to us in our homes, in our streets, in our hands, it is multiform and like a new computer-virus, it is passed on and disseminated with global consequences. But what lies beneath the surface of modern media? What is the mechanism that exerts such influence over our minds?

In his essay entitled “Muslims and Others: Anecdotes, Fragments and Uncertainties of Evidence”, Rustom Bharucha raises the point that in the post ‘September 11’ world one may well “pass as a ‘Muslim’ or ‘terrorist’” if one happens to fit the identity “manufactured by governmental regimes and surveillance systems[…]” and that “once marked, ‘The Muslim’ assumes a hyper-real significance, regardless of whether or not it is linked to a mistaken or real identity […].”(Bharucha, 2004) On a day-to-day level, such a manufactured identity is made possible through the gross dissemination of images. It is the extent of image flooding and the voracity of our media consumption, that enables a figure like Osama Bin Laden, for example, to become the universal archetypal image of ‘terror’, when the most dangerous threat is not necessarily the immediate, belligerent one we are made to fear, but the long-term segregation his image brings by nurturing prejudice and strengthening the cliché association of Islam with radicalism.

This mindless repetition of imagery, mixed with slogans and speech is one indirect way of influencing an audience. A more direct means also exists, one in which media directors, editors and producers manipulate images, text and speech in accordance with objectives from company executives who share key relations and political agendas with government officials. This is the realm of what Noam Chomsky has called ‘manufacturing consent’. In this sense the case of the Japanese media, to which I was partial as a resident in Japan from 2001-2005, is no different. One only needs to take a quick foray into the recent history of Japan’s major television companies (notably NHK, the state-owned channel) to find records of image and information manipulation. “So common is the staging of fake news reports that it has its own name, yarase, meaning literally “made to do it”. Alex Kerr goes on to say that “The common thread in the yarase for foreign documentaries is to show how poor, miserable, seedy, or violent life is elsewhere, with the implied message that life in Japan is really very nice.” (Kerr, 2001:114)

This media juxtaposition of Japan as safe and sacrosanct against a dangerous outside ‘other’, like Osama Bin Laden or the war-torn Iraq, has been reiterated in my presence on several notable occasions. One instance in particular takes me back to a day in a Yokohama Junior High School, at the time of the US-led ‘search’ for Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan in 2001. On that day a Japanese instructor of English stood next to me and delivered a speech to her class that implored the students to be grateful for the state of peace in their country and not to have to live in one of the more “troubled parts of the world” that they hear about in the news. That Japan enjoys a peaceful society is not an issue of great concern here, but that such a dividing and bias-inducing juxtaposition is reiterated at this important social level, in a school classroom, is testament enough to the stronghold and influence media has on daily life. So if I hold myself responsible for the constructions of an ‘invisible stage’, I also hold those in charge of producing that media and upholding these mechanisms of influence whether they be aware or unaware of the financial/political pressures applied from above.

So a year and a half after seeing the real Al-Murwass performance has my position changed? In terms of my initial prejudice towards the cast, well obviously yes, that ‘invisible stage’ no longer exists. This is thanks to the power of theatre and its ability to break cultural/racial clichés and prejudice. But I don’t think it’s the role of the theatre to rid the world of prejudice, the theatre is first and foremost a place of ‘fiction’, of make-believe and pretend, in which we like to see life from obscure and bizarre angles, it should leave didacticsm and moralizing to parents, teachers and professors alike. To quote Howard Barker: “…the play is not a debate, it is literally ‘play’, and like children’s play it is ‘world-inventing’, requiring no legitimation from the exterior.” (Barker) The influence of media in daily life has increased significantly over the last decade and will continue to do so over the next one too, and we, as its consumers, have become so intimately and unwittingly involved in it that we are less and less interested in looking at its ethics and shortcomings. Therefore I fear that this will not be the last ‘invisible stage’ that I experience.

Footnotes

[1] http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/01/29/iraq.main/ Cal Perry, CNN News Online, Sunday Jan 30th 2005.

[2] Iraqi national elections January 30th 2005.

[3] Source: “http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/12/20041206-2.html President and Iraqi Interim President Al-Yawer Discuss Iraq Future”.

[4] http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/01/20020129-11.html George Bush State of the Union Address Jan 29th 2002.

[5] http://japanmediareview.com/japan/media/1047776795.php Jane Ellen Stevens. “Yomiuri Shimbun’s Reluctant Race Against the Internet”.

References

Barker, Howard, Arguments for a Theatre (Manchester, Manchester University Press: 1989)

Bharucha, Rustom, “Muslims And Others: Anecdotes, Fragments, And Uncertainties Of Evidence”. Inter-Asia Cultural Studies: Movements. Vol 5 Number 3 December 2004.

Chomsky, Noam, Media Control (NY, Seven Stories Press: 2002)

Kerr, Alex, Dogs & Demons: The Fall of Modern Japan (London, Penguin: 2001)

War Photographer. Dir Christian Frei. 2001 James Nachtwey. Christian Frei Filmproductions.

I rationalise the situation as part of the urban paradox: We flock like sheep through city landscapes; tens of thousands congregating in commercial centres, Shinjuku, Shibuya, Leicester Square, Times Square, Châtelet les Halles etc. We go there purportedly for commercial transactions, but we also go there out of curioisty for one another, to see and be seen, to satisfy our social desire for community and interaction. Once there however, we’re desperate to uphold and protect our individuality.

In a city like Tokyo, space is a luxury. We really only have ourselves, our bodies, our ‘personal/inner space’ to call our own. We are islands in a sea of concrete and glass. John Donne once wrote “No man is an island, entire of itself every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main […]”*, but in this city of cities, and right here now on this stiff wooden theatre bench I find that hard to grasp.

The stage is plunged into darkness. After a long pause, a marching band plays a sweet melody that clears the air and brings soft light to the space. Into the light spring two girls in ivory wedding gowns. They chase each other across the stage, tripping and tumbling in the sand. I watch this ‘innocent’ child’s play perplexed by their appearance: girls in spirit but women in form. I had a conversation once with a professor at the University of Tokyo who used the term ‘shoujyo’ (少女) to describe an isolated trend among young Japanese women to dress up and act as ‘pre-teens’. The litteral translation is ‘little girl’ or ‘maiden’ but that conveys only half the meaning, the Japanese cultural connotation contains an element of sexual overtone. Perhaps the women on stage are performing ‘shoujyo’.

The child’s play continues but it is not long before a third girl enters the playground. She is the turning point, the intruder, and the girls are fighting now, clawing and ripping at their ivory gowns. I notice a heightened sense of concentration from the audience around me, almost as if this is what they had been waiting for. One theory explaining the ‘shoujyo’ phenomenon is the desire and expression of an alternative female existence; one that exists outside of a patriarchal structure.

This display of equivocal erotica descends further into the grotesque. More bodies join the romp; dressed in silky lingerie and high heels, they contort in the sand like couples in a drunken tango; two of them are writhing at my feet, launching the occasional droplet of sweat or fake blood into the audience. The dance has taken a violent turn and I have forgotten myself and the cramped wooden seats. The walls between my neighbours have dissolved and we are watching and breathing as one. Our collective eye is rapt by this abomination on stage, our collective lung is pumping adrenaline into the room. Collective in body and emotion, yet still individual in mind. What I wouldn’t give to know what my neighbours are thinking in this moment!

The frenzy finally ends and the marching band’s sweet melody returns; my senses regain composure and I am aware once again of the human body press squeezing me tight. I look left and right but the reaction is calm, energy is drained. In that short-lived moment I realise we had become human again – not strangers or foreigners – but every bit as perverse as the young women on stage.