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I am
beginning to believe Shoko Matsumoto, the inestimable
light designer and craftsperson, is a theater idea unto
herself. Make that an art force singular and full of
hope.
For
several months now, as my personal recollection brings
me, her Sinag-Arts Studio has nurtured theater pieces
that, like any great by-product of minds that refuse to
be locked in dreadful categories, naturally not only
crossed boundaries but eternally challenged walls set by
conventions—be they of the literary type or the
political. She describes her studio as a 400
square-meter creative space and, for some reason, you
find the description honest, apt and never pretentious.
Many
people may not know Shoko-san, as some of those who know
her would address her, but they have seen her and her
awareness of the magic and power of lights in theater.
She designs practically all the major events—the
commercial, effete, straight, gay-oriented, mass-based,
politicized, problematic and problematized events in our
metropolis. In all of this, her light designs have
boosted the suspension and the elevation and the
articulation of belief and disbelief, and when the work
being staged is wanting in cohesion, her light becomes
the only source of solid joy in the enterprise. Which
may not be a source of joy for this artist who has
developed already a Pinoy sense of humor and an
unchallenged love for her Pinoy dog.
World-class—that much aspired character of our artists,
both pseudo and real—is a point for celebration and
subversion for this Japanese woman who one day just
packed her belongings, arrived in this city and surveyed
the place that she had known in her previous trips,
threw all caution to the four winds, and set up a place
that would be first about light, and second about
sharing.
Shoko
has been there in the hallowed theaters and opera houses
in Vienna and London. She could have stayed there but
she has set up this studio amid the squalor of common
residences. The structure called the Sinag-Arts studio
is, in fact, a warehouse in which the core is a
black-box type theater. It is a warehouse among
warehouses. Unlike the other warehouses, it produces
nothing for commerce but for something that finds its
value outside of the money of men and women.
I want
to share what I know. Shoko was replying to my question
that I released as I, without meaning to, looked around
the surrounding. The place is functional but not
elegant. Sinag-Arts Studio is not meant to decorate a
place, like those whitewashed walls along Quirino that
shelter slums. It is meant to partake of the
surroundings. Uptight PR guys call it character.
It
cannot be denied, however, that theater in this form
manages to dare itself and be daring. Two words that
fulfill my idea of this frail-looking woman in front of
me as she wonders why, with the surplus of good artists
in this country, the good ones are not able to share.
Over
lunch, we talked not of Brecht but of bills, the
electric type. How she has to raise a huge amount if
only to keep the walls of that studio standing—and keep
her staff, and the artists breathing and doing art. It
is an old story but in the presence of a Japanese who
has almost renounced the comforts of her native country,
the tale is inspiring. She has a thousand and one ideas,
not one of them dull, to raise money.
Having
worked with the
Tokyo design houses during its fashion season, Shoko was
telling me how she had always threatened to stage a
fashion show in full theater treatment. She would show
the audience not just the models strutting on the runway
but the process of the fashion show itself, from
preparation to makeup, from presentation to attitude.
The entire surrounding would be her site. Very Japanese,
I told her.
Sinag-Arts
Foundation is into many things. It is composed of an
artistic staff from the various allied fields of arts,
dance and theater. Craftsmen, electrical engineers and
painters meet in her field and work together to compose
the main canvas of any theatrical presentation.
When I
joined her for lunch, she was winding up an extended
training for local light designers. The syllabus was
interesting because it basically avoided the basic arts
and focused on the practical and hands-on aspect of the
craft. Safety was the main concern of the lessons and
improvisation and good preparation were being
emphasized. After lunch, one by one, the students were
asked to light a person as Shoko asked questions about
the effect of blues and reds behind, above or below the
character. In that short exercise, the participants were
telling stories just and because of by the use of
lights.
A few
weeks after that lunch, I was in Shoko’s place again to
watch Bedtime Stories, a collaboration between Filipino
and Japanese artists. Directed by Toshihisa Yoshida, the
theater piece is a collection of five contemporary
theatrical vignettes all happening with a bed. That
afternoon, the play proceeded to work on themes of love
and war and gender and witchcraft, with the actors
shifting from one identity to another, from one language
to another, with the monitor not missing a beat to
provide a subtitle in English and Japanese, whatever the
moment requires.
Bedtime
Stories paints of an aswang that is both malevolent and
loving, half-nurturing, half destroying, Japanese and
Filipino at the same time. It is a terrific metaphor for
two countries celebrating and severing highly complex
ties. In the plays, the Filipino actors embraced a
theater of reality, with the aim of convincing the
audience that what was happening was real; the Japanese
actors offered a theater that articulated breathless
artifice that left the audience gasping for the energy
that seemed to be ejecting passions always.
In one
of the vignettes, a Japanese actor portraying a
Japanese-Filipino woman, defiantly staked her claim as
the first foreign aswang. Much as I wanted to believe
her, I know who is the first foreign aswang: that person
with the potency to understand different cultures and to
challenge her acceptance by a village as a stranger and
as a person with boon to share.
*****
The
Rinko-gun Theater Company of Tokyo presentation of
Bedtime Stories at the
Cultural Center
of the Philippines’ Tanghalang Huseng Batute is a
Philippine-Japan collaborative production organized by
the CCP and the Japan Foundation Manila. |
