The "Voice" of Contemporary Theater

2020/03/10

"I am researching the 'voice' in contemporary theater." If I were to introduce myself that way, most people would probably imagine methods for producing a charming, beautiful voice or acting techniques for clearly conveying words and emotions. However, what I have dealt with so far are voices where both words and emotions are unclear—voices that seem about to fade away, ear-splitting screams, or nauseating voices.

In contemporary theater, one often hears voices that are far from what is generally called a "beautiful voice." What is heard in such voices, whether we as listeners like it or not, are the fleeting traces left in our ears by the body existing there. I believe that at the root of the attempt to make those traces resonate and remain in someone's ears is an affirmation of the fact that an individual human being exists there and is appealing for something. It is not because they are useful to someone or because they are sought after by someone that they are permitted to exist there or to appeal to their surroundings. I think I am interested in activities that remind us of this.

Performing arts can be said to be an art form that prepares a unique space for such "voices" that are difficult to make resonate in daily life. There, the audience is welcomed as listeners and is asked to temporarily stop speaking for themselves and concentrate on the act of listening. However, what they are asked to listen to is not necessarily the performer's own voice. Among the productions I have handled, there are those dealing with atomic bomb survivors in Nagasaki; for example, in those cases, the performer becomes a mediator between the survivors outside the theater and the audience inside. They use their exceptional skills not to make their own voices heard, but to make perceived the voices that have already vanished in distant lands or are about to vanish. In that space, the performer is also a listener more than a narrator.

Modern people, driven by fierce global competition, are so busy promoting themselves that they tend to forget the act of listening to the "voices" of others, especially the "voices" of those who have lost in the competition. But is a society where everyone strives for such a way of life truly happy? To build a truly rich society, don't we need a place to occasionally pause and reflect on what the competition was for in the first place?