07. 05. 2018

THE ELEPHANT – A GUEST PERFORMANCE BY THE JAPANESE THEATER OFFICE NATORI COMPANY

The Tokyo-based theatre company Theater Office Natori will present its production of The Elephant, a Japanese absurd drama, at Cluj. The two performances of the work written by Betsuyaku Minoru, one of the most renowned playwrights of contemporary Japanese theatre will take place on June 12 and 13 in the Studio Hall of the Hungarian Theatre of Cluj. Tickets can already be purchased at the theatre’s ticket office and online at www.biletmaster.ro. The production will be performed in Japanese and will have Romanian surtitles.

Based in Tokyo, Theatre Office Natori is led by Toshiyuki Natori. The institution creates theatrical and dance performances, as well as films, while also hosting the International Ibsen Festival every three years.

This is the story of a patient who is a victim of the atomic bombing and has a strange desire to show people on the street the keloid scar on his back and use it as a way to win sympathy and applause. His nephew tries to stop him from such actions and convince him that people neither love nor hate or are repulsed by the atomic bombing victims. From the contrasting feelings of these two characters we sense the estranged world these victims have fallen into and, by extension the existential anxiety that the entire world must bear.

Betsuyaku Minoru wrote his absurd drama The Elephant [Zo] (1962) under the influence of Beckett and Kafka, among others, a play concerning the lives of the victims of atomic bombing.  The author speaks to his audience in the everyday language of the lower middle class, addressing the absurd situations that occur in our daily lives. Betsuyaku is the most productive Japanese writer of our time, authoring 130 plays, but also children’s tales, essays and critique.