Reading week 6

Reading – Week 6

Bonney, J. (2000). Extreme Exposure: An Anthology of Solo Performance Texts from the Twentieth Century. New York: Theatre Communications Group.

DAWN AKEMI SAITO

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Saito works with material deeply personal to her, but this material is shaped by her culture and background. Saito has Japanese and American routes, and her father’s role in the Second World War in the Japanese Imperial Army impacts on her work. ‘She takes the stuff of her life, often chaotic stuff, often unbearable stuff of pain and ugliness and despair and casts it in an aesthetic form.’ She presents nightmare-like text and juxtaposes it with beauty and elegance in her physical embodiment. She is greatly influenced by Butoh. Saito performs on a bare stage and wear a long flesh coloured latex dress. She plays all of the characters within the performance, young man, old woman, animal etc. ‘The real world is rendered as hallucination.’

Ha

This piece is centred on the relationship Saito had with her grandfather. After she saw him for the first time she was so horrified by the sight of his mutilated face that she stopped speaking. The piece is very personal and is highly descriptive, it sets up the story with visual clues as to the location of the story. She discussed eating white food when she was young so that she could change the colour of her skin, which points to race as an issue. There is discussion around drugs and the use of them when she discusses her sister, who only eats white powder and smokes. This is shrouded in metaphor and symbols because it is still a child discussing her sister. The story moves on to discuss Saito as an adult who moves in next to a stripper and a man who is seemingly unstable. She discusses her reactions when she hears of this man’s repulsive actions, but she takes the middle ground. The reaction to the sickening actions of this man avoids confrontation. The piece has several characters in, including her grandfather, grandmother, mother, father, a monkey and herself. The final part of the story gets dark, Saito finds out that her grandfathers facial disfigurement occurred because he took part in torture and experimental biological weapons testing in Japan during the war, and it is a very dark and descriptive explanation. This changes Saito’s opinion of her grandfather and she goes from a regretful person who wishes she could have spoken to him, to dreaming about him, being horrified about his position during the war, and she now hates him. He is blamed for everything that goes wrong. There is a suggestion that some of the scenes are hallucinations. Saito’s performance is very dark and very personal, but she embodies the characters within the play.