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Theatre Journal 55.1 (2003) 138-140



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Electra. Based on the text of Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Directed and designed by Tadashi Suzuki. Performed by members of the Shizuoka Performing Arts Center. Japan Society, New York City. 1 November 2001.
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Tadashi Suzuki and his company returned to the United States for the first time in ten years with a North American Tour in November and December 2001. Tadashi Suzuki is recognized for the intensity, beauty, and communal energy of his productions. He is also known for his physically challenging actor training method that is taught around the world, including in some of this country's most reputable actor training programs.

The influence of Japanese Noh and Kabuki traditions is evident in all of Suzuki's work as he brings the essential beauties of these forms into his staging of Greek tragedy. Suzuki believes that great issues transcend national identity and sees future theatre platformed on universals already existing in the construction of the human body. In program notes, Suzuki emphasizes the importance of "animal" energy. He points out that as societies become increasingly modernized, they come to understand the world indirectly through various electronic media, newspapers, and books, a change from earlier societies where social knowledge came from first-hand contact. He cautions that we risk over relying on "non-animal" (i.e., indirect) energy for it can "lead to neglect or loss of the rich possibilities [End Page 138] of the 'animal' energy stored in our individual bodies." Suzuki believes that a properly cultured society is one where the perceptive and expressive abilities of the human body are used to the fullest as the fundamental means of communication. This emphasis on "animal" energy is evident in one of the productions included in his recent tour, Electra.

Suzuki based his Electra on the text by Austrian poet and dramatist Hugo von Hofmannsthal. It was performed in Japanese with projected English subtitles. The action takes place in a mental institution, a setting reflecting Suzuki's concern with the illness of the human psyche and our social institutions. As the play begins, the chorus of five men with contorted upper bodies enters the stage in wheel chairs, dressed in black shirts, shorts, and hats. Circling the single musician, they begin deep guttural groaning, stomp from their chairs, then look out astonished and curious into the audience. The chorus is onstage throughout, often observing, sometimes becoming the voice for characters onstage, sometimes pleading with Electra to come to her senses.

As portrayed by the actor Yukiki Saito, Electra's obsession and rage are all consuming. Her contorted posture, held with rock-like stillness during her diatribes, demonstrates the actor's physical and vocal strength, and control. Most of the dialogue is delivered directly to the audience, and the intensity of Saito's voice is amplified by her grotesque facial expression, unblinking eyes, and clenched muscles.

Clytemnestra is possessed by and anguishes in her guilt. She cannot live with her crime and is haunted to the extent that her dreams deny her sleep. As portrayed by Toshiko Takeuchi, Clytemnestra is a frightening presence, shrieking at her daughter, abusing her nurse, and wielding her staff like a weapon. Her final offstage torment is terrifying, as the audience hears Orestes murder her through amplified sound.

Electra appears trapped in circumstances that offer little hope. Suzuki believes that no human being at any time or in any place is immune from the risk of living a similarly atrocious and maddening life. However, although Suzuki sees the world as inevitably painful, he celebrates the human capacity for striving against impossible odds. He writes in his program notes, "If all the world is a hospital, there may be little hope for getting well. Nevertheless, one can try, against vast odds, to make clear in what sort of spiritual illness a human being is trapped. And that is what I believe to be the task of the contemporary artist-creator."

When characters actually look at one another, which is infrequently, the focus is specific and intense. All the vocal work is very high in volume and deep...

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