Qui som? / Who are we? brings together artists from a range of genres. What values or principles do you prioritize when creating as a team?

To put together a team, we need to surround ourselves with people who have dedicated many years to movement work and physical engagement, as it is the exploration of balance and imbalance that forms the central focus of our piece-writing. We write through physical engagement. We also need to find people who want to be part of a troupe, who want to take part in a collaborative project, and whose need and desire is, above all, to be part of a group. 続きを読む »

Your production of “Medea” had its world premiere in Japan in 1999. What did you want to say then through that work?

The Kosovo war was going on and in March 1999 NATO warplanes struck [the former] Yugoslavia. Then in that summer we started to create “Medea”. I didn’t understand why NATO intervened in the war, or whether it was actually the right thing to do or not. So in fact, just my uncomfortable feeling against the war became a huge motive to create “Medea”.

Regarding the intervention, I felt that Western rationalists assessed things purely using their own logic and values, and they wanted the people most directly affected — who were implicitly regarded as inferior — to rise to the same level as themselves.

I had that kind of impression in my head while we were creating “Medea”, and reading Euripides’s eponymous tragedy back then I felt that in Ancient Greece, and especially Athens, people assumed and really believed they were more rational and advanced than those in any other country.

In my view, Ancient Greeks considered the Medea of their mythology inferior to them in three respects.

The first of those was in terms of “rational consideration”. In the play [first performed in 431 BC], it is proposed that Greeks consider things rationally, whereas Asian Medea [born in Colchis on the eastern Black Sea coast] does not. Furthermore, the Ancient Greeks view Medea as inferior because she is a “woman”, since Ancient Greek democracy was the sole preserve of men. The reason for this was because only men could participate in war as soldiers.

In Japan also, when the Meiji Era [1868–1912] began, the new government advocated “equality of the people of all classes” — however equality applied only to people who joined the army under the national policy of “increasing the wealth and military of the nation”. So, whether peasant or samurai, people were judged equally as being useful or not useful in a military force. Hence the ways of thinking in both the Meiji Era, that “all citizens are equal within the military”, and in Ancient Greece’s “democracy by men” are very similar. 続きを読む »

Why did you decide to tackle “Tiger of Malaya,” and how did you approach it?

Alfian: I’ve always wanted to create a work with Japanese artists, ever since I attended
TPAM (Tokyo Performing Arts Meeting) back in 2016. I was really inspired by the
diversity of the Japanese plays that I watched, and how contemporary it seemed to
me—there were works ranging from documentary theatre to those dealing with
multimedia. 続きを読む »

What inspired you to create this work around the themes of “witches” and “maids”?

Both : A visit to the Pharmacy Museum at the University of Basel in Switzerland sparked a simple but unsettling question: where are the women in the history of medicine?

From there, we were led to the Middle Bridge, where a plaque commemorates the women and men who were accused of witchcraft and persecuted. This encounter opened the door to a deeper exploration of European witch-hunting history, where we learned that the so-called “last witch” executed in Europe was beheaded as late as 1782. Her name was Anna Göldi, a Swiss housemaid accused of witchcraft by her male employer.

Coming from the Philippines and Sri Lanka—countries that continue to export domestic labor to the Global North—we found ourselves drawn to the figures of the witch and the maid, and how their histories remain entangled with present realities.

We subsequently also came across a newspaper article titled ‘Is your Sri Lankan a Filipina?’ where the word Sri Lankan was used to mean ‘housemaid’, and this prompted further exploration.

In Silvia Federici’s work, witch-hunting is understood as part of the historical subjugation of women: a mechanism used to suppress indigenous knowledge systems and enforce new forms of social and economic control. It functioned as a tool that enabled emerging systems of exploitation, profiting from the labor of women and colonized peoples. Accusations of witchcraft, in different forms, continue to be used today.

Domestic workers were being persecuted in certain parts of the world. We use the broom, which connects the popular image of the witch and the house maid. It becomes an extension of our bodies that transform from the domestic, mechanical, to the sensual, finally reclaiming a wildness. In the work we are metaphorically sweeping out into the surface things that should not have been swept under. 続きを読む »

What gave you the idea to create this work titled “Eel Migration” about people in Japan with Brazilian roots?

I moved to Shizuoka Prefecture in 2020, and though I’d heard it had a well-known Brazilian community I didn’t have chance to meet any of those people in private or through my work. That was probably also due to the pandemic at that time — but even so, I thought I should be seeing some of those people in the theatre along with everybody else.

SPAC has run outreach projects and theatre appreciation programs for junior- and high-school students for ages. As a result of so many young people coming into contact with SPAC, some of them now work here as staff or actors. With all sorts of children joining such programs at school, some develop an interest in theatre as a result — and I hope more may think of SPAC as a career option. That is one of the reasons I wanted to work with Shizuoka people who have Brazilian roots.

Nevertheless, I sometimes feel a bit uncomfortable about consciously collaborating with people from diverse backgrounds in Japan. I’d prefer it if a really wide range of people gathered together naturally at the theatre without anyone reaching out to a particular group. However, our current society doesn’t work like that, and I have not been able to create such an environment. Hence I believe I do need to engage with particular communities and invite them into the theatre, even if there is a risk of misunderstanding. So this project is part of a process of such outreach.

Speaking personally, I have always wanted to be free from roots and to cut off those I have. Due to my work and marriage circumstances, though, I started to live here in Shizuoka where my parents were born. Then I had my children, and it has become more difficult to live as an individual without any ties.

Many of the people with Brazilian roots who are living in Shizuoka have some connection to the long history of migration between Japan and Brazil. I wanted to hear their voices; how they feel about living here now. For me, theatre is the best way to communicate and listen to their voices, so I’ve taken that route this time. 続きを読む »