AYTF Team JAPAN comprises: Fream! Theatre, Theatre Group GUMBO and Sakai International Community Arts

PANDEMIC OF WORDS

Abuse on social media, has led to a rapid rise in young Japanese people contemplating suicide, with an unfortunate few selecting to take their own lives. This tool for expanding the world economically and socially – that connects humans across the globe, has created a narrow and abnormal world in which there is only “You” and “Not you (= enemy)”.

It has created an alternative disease, that when combined with COVID can cause the “unhappiness infection”, a new & large lesion on modern Japanese society. Like the black Tsunami, it consumes and swallows healthy people, taking away their lives, not with blades or with guns, but with “Words” – hurtful and dangerous.

ALIEN NATION

Two security officers arrive at a high-level quarantine facility for duty, only to be met by a surveillance camera installed, pointing at them and unaccounted for.  Amidst their many differences, they pull together to find out the truth of this situation.

THE BLUE MAN

A young Bengali boy learns quickly that he is colour blind, but it is only on moving to the USA, that he discovers his skin is also blue. He quickly becomes a person of interest, increasing his popularity. However, as he is initially unaware of the reason for this popularity, he attempts to integrate into society. It is a difficult time in the USA, with the black lives matter movement becoming increasingly more visual. The man chooses to join the supporters of the movement as he abhors violence, but when he sees black people looting and destroying public property, he selects to join the opposition. Unfortunately, regardless of his own choices, neither party wishes to accept him, as he is too different.  He is confused by the situation, and writes a letter to his parents to seek help about his identity. To which party does he belong? He tries to find a human connection that transcends race or colour – to find acceptance without agenda.

A LESSON LEARNED

Once there was a family who worked at a brick factory outside of Mandalay.  They had a son and a daughter.  Every day the family would get up early and go to work.  The children wished to go to school but the parents refused to send them due to their economic state.  One day the boy accidentally cut his feet at work.  The parents rubbed the wound with dust, but the boy’s feet got infected and he became sick.  When the father was out, he ran into the village teacher and shared his problem.  The village teacher took him and his son to the clinic.  The boy was saved and the parents were grateful to the Doctor and the Teacher and thanked them for their care.  After the incident they decided to send their children to school so that they too may one day become teachers and doctors and shared their experience with their friends so that they too acknowledged the value of education.

THROUGH OUR EYES

A devised performance exploring the relationship between humans through inanimate objects.  This performance will focus on how food is used as a social medium within Bruneian culture.  This performance will include local art forms to aid in conveying the story.  It will also touch on other inanimate objects that affect human relationships.

DEAFENING SILENCE

The story of three lives intertwined during a pandemic.  A nurse and her struggles, an artist turned food delivery driver making ends meet, and a retrenched mother struggling to keep her family fed.  The three characters discover their own sense of humanity as they are confronted with a new reality wrapped in anxiety, isolation and hopelessness.

PAN

A What is food?  Sustenance?  Socialisation?  How are they connected?  PAN is a developing and experimental performance aimed for full production in 2022.  Inspired by cooking for protesters in Thailand, this performance addresses the relationship between the new generation of thinkers, how to earn a living with new standards and ambition for the future, through conversations and body movements in the kitchen.

THE MISERABLE LINE

What do you call a person who thinks he/she is always right, and any other opinion is wrong?  If that person is your wife/husband/boyfriend/girlfriend how do you deal with it?  What makes a relationship?  Is it more important to be right?  Being right is so overrated, especially when it comes at the expense of basic human kindness.  Where’s the fun in that?  Where’s the love in that?  There are so many healthier choices we can make other than needing to be right.  let’s start making them!  The Miserable Line is a story about a family that can’t connect to each other.  Most couples have not hundreds of arguments; they’ve had the same argument hundreds of times.  A daughter suffers from a mother who is always right and a father who is always drunk.  Family problems come in all shapes and sizes; some are short-lived and easily managed, while others are more chronic and difficult to handle.  Being right or wrong is not as important as humane.

CUBA FAHAM

VIRTUAL INTERACTIVE PERFORMANCE EXPERIENCE VOL. 2: NONGSKUY