Director’s notes

by Shingo KIMURA  

The Escape from sights

Various sights generated on the stage
Actors appear on the stage from somewhere. Sights, which they move, wiggle, stir and transform.
They produce sights. They continue to move sights.
A new sight comes into being wherever they move sights.
Then they realize that they themselves are trapped in the "sights" that they have generated.
 
Communication with the sights
After a while, they start communicating with the sights they have generated.
On the stage there is nothing besides the sights they have generated and composed.
They continue to communicate with the sights.
They exchange almost no words with one another. They utter hardly any sounds, either.
This is because they risk becoming part of the sights the instant they exchange words.
Shut into the sights, they continue to stand on the stage, as being who have lost their words and voices, in order to refuse to dissolve into the sights.
Are the sights fake? Or are they fake?
 
Repeated escapes
Next they try to escape from the stage-and thus, from the "sights" they have generated.
For example, they try to destroy the sights.
Whenever they destroy a sights, a new image, a new sight appears.
They repeat the "escape" again and again.
A new sight appears whenever a sight is destroyed.
Many illusions.
Many acts of "escape", which they repeat in near futility.
 
Where is reality?
In order to bring back real, vivid activity after their continuous communication with the sights, they tear up the sights and illusions that they themselves generated.
They do this in order that they themselves may recognize the moment as the true reality that we live in the present.
 
STORE HOUSE COMPANY   Director Shingo KIMURA

Boxes    Director’s notes

The "Boxes" is a theatrical performance in which boxes continue to be moved around.
However, by no means, there is any gimmick, mechanical or whatsoever, on the stage.
Those people who appear on the stage, generally called actors or performers, keep moving the boxes.
That is the so-called human wave tactics.
On the stage, placed are 20 wooden boxes of 90 cm of width, 30 cm of height and 30 cm of depth.
The size or material or number of boxes scarcely has any meaning.
Some people say that Mr. Kimura, the director of the play, who is 50 years old now, used to see the boxes containing apples in his hometown of Aomori when he was a little boy, and his subconscious memories made him decide to use such boxes in his works.
But such an inquiry has little meaning for those who perform on the stage,   they are not interested in the memories of others or history of the origin.
They move around the boxes in front of them.
They continue to carry about the boxes.
Each time the boxes are moved around and carried about, the "boxes" turned to be the "wall" or the "road" or the "hole" or the "gate". 
Of course, they are well aware of the fact that the "boxes" are still "boxes". 
They know well that the "wall", the "road", the "hole" and the "gate" are nothing but illusions.
They, who move around boxes and continue to carry about boxes, appear to look like laborers.
They move around the "boxes".
They continue to carry about the "boxes".
And the "boxes” continue to be moved around.
 
STORE HOUSE COMPANY  Director   Shingo KIMURA

Ceremony   Director’s notes 

Fanfares ring out loudly in the absence of bride and groom at weddings.
There are we who look like some archaeologists peek into the footprints that left on the virgin road.
Funeral hall changes its title to ceremony hall, but funeral is still repeated without the dead again and again.
Even bones are not remained in the crematory.
Innumerable fossils are still being produced at the factories here and there.
Fossils carry fabricate memories, neither being buried nor able to hide themselves in the darkness, just drifting about for the drifting sake.  
Therefore, graves need to be dug up.
Yes, certainly, graves need to be dug up.
There are we, who are here to dig up the graves.
There are we, who are here being buried in the graves.
There are we, who are here to see it.
Our eyes are repeated back and forth.
“WE” need to be buried again.
 
STORE HOUSE COMPANY   Director Shingo KIMURA

Remains   Director’s notes

On the “ROLE”
 
In the production of “Remains”, there is no such a thing as “Role” in the sense it is commonly used in the general theater.
In the space we live in, there are various roles such as father, mother, grand parents, brothers, husband, wife, friends, acquaintances, colleagues, superiors, subordinates, seniors or juniors.
In the “Remains”, however, there are no such roles or names of roles. 
“Remains” is a space where all the roles are abandoned or robbed.
We, human beings, are sometimes called a social animal. To be a social animal means we have social self. Social self is, in other words, oneself which can undertake some roles in the society.
“Remains” are suspicious of the human model which can be described as social animal.
“Remains” keep suggesting to the people living there only to be animal.
For those human beings who aim to be animal, it is not necessary to be equipped with gestures or expressions in the face which social self obligates oneself to own. What is necessary for animallike human being is not individuality or personality but the difference among individuals. They are: the hair, cheekbones, the ribs, backbones, the hip joint, the pubic hair, sexual organs and the difference of muscles which wrap them or support them.
We are living on the supposition that the gesture or the expressions in the face of social self are individuality or personality. “Remains” have strong doubts on this supposition.
We are under an illusion that the social self, that is, individuality is what we have obtained. On the contrary, “Remains” know that the individuality is nothing but an invented notion of the society (nation, people and various communities) to facilitate the administration of the individual entity. The suspicions we tend to feel when politicians appeal to the people through television originate exactly from here.
They talk to people as if everyone of them has his own individuality, but in fact they only like to have people like obedient sheep who blindly pay taxes. That is, the individuality is used a cover by politicians to hide their true intention to treat us as domestic animals and exploit us.
In the similar context, “Remains” reject any suggestion that the director of a production creates his theater respecting the individuality of each actor. “Remains” know well that almost all directors who pretend to make much of the individuality of each actor, in reality, wish to their actors as domestic animals just like politicians do. “Remains” renounce “role” or are robbed of it, and strongly demand to treat human being thoroughly as an individual.
It is by no means a sense or feeling of human beings who have degraded themselves to domestic animals, but nothing other than the desire of “Remains” to experience the sense or feeling of human being as true animals.
 
There lies a standard of fiction of “Remains”.
 
STORE HOUSE COMPANY   Director Shingo KIMURA

PARADE   Director’s Notes

Once upon a time, the People have walked with facing above sky.
The time passed, the People is only standing with looking at a hill.
However, the memories are vague in many cases.
The vagueness of the memories are.......
For example,
It is the thing such as the act to love one's foot print lost incessantly on beach with hearing the sound that treading on leaves in a forest.
It is good enough as it is.
The Reality is always here with keeping vague.
The Voice I have been able to hear is telling me that.
Shall we walk?
This is the Beginning of PARADE.
 
STORE HOUSE COMPANY  Director  Shingo KIMURA