Yoshifumi Hagiya: What to Believe in an Age of Chaos

2021/05/20

He leads "mooncuproof" while working as a freelance playwright and director. The organization stages plays that pose various questions to the audience through the depiction of human beings struggling to live in a world overflowing with things beyond their control. To date, he has written and directed scripts with themes that respond to modern society, such as discrimination and division, birth and death, and democracy and power.

Theater is troublesome. To watch it, you must go directly to the venue, and while it is being performed, you are often confined to the space and forbidden from using phones or talking. However, precisely because we live in a modern age where information flows incessantly regardless of location or situation, I believe there is value in theater, where one can face oneself and think about something while carefully observing the events on stage.

My encounter with theater was during my university years. While participating in a club that produced and performed original musicals and watching plays mainly in small theaters, I became fascinated by the art where words acquire a body and space, appearing as a phenomenon before one's eyes. After graduation, I studied creative theory and practical methods at a theater school and launched mooncuproof in 2016.

Three years later, mooncuproof staged its sixth play, "2019, Tokyo, and then, or →." It is a work that asks the audience, "What do you believe in to live in a modern society filled with unpredictable anxiety?" "The year 2020 is a round number and there are the Olympics. It will be a special year for us. If so, what kind of year is the preceding 2019?" This idea was the starting point, and I wrote a play that shed light on "believing in something" as an important thing for surviving while depicting the various anxieties that existed in society at the time. This work, performed at the Suginami Drama Festival, was praised for its depiction of modern society and unique physical expression, winning the Excellence Award.

2020. It became a special year in a completely different way than expected. COVID-19, which swept the world into a whirlpool of anxiety, also had a major impact on theater. Cancellations and postponements have followed one after another at the sites I am involved in. All we can do is pray for it to end. We are right in the middle of the very "modern society filled with unpredictable anxiety" that I made into a work. In such a situation, what do I believe in as I live? The question I once threw at the audience has now returned to me. "I believe in theater." I want to be able to say that with pride.