The theatre the foreigner and I

I’m sitting in the front row of a small Tokyo theatre. The stage is only partially lit but I can see the contours of a children’s playground; there’s a see-saw, a climbing frame and sand that reaches into the auditorium. The benches are filling up quickly now and the show will begin in a few minutes time. My body is compressed by the weight of those beside me; someone’s knee just pinned my lower back; I’m trying to view the culprit, but I’m stuck, hemmed in wall-to-wall with complete strangers, and in this moment I feel like the most complete of strangers. Me, a student, a theatre goer, a ‘Westerner’, a foreigner. For a while I toy with the curiosity of this feeling but the thought vanishes when against all odds, a tall man squeezes himself into the row letting off a chain of gasps down the line.

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.

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* From the essay Meditation XVII by John Donne (1572-1631)