Deconstruction Project

Poom2
“A Page Out of Order M to M”
Yoshiko Chuma and the School of Hard Knocks
Japan Society, New York
May 17, 2008

by Tom Phillips
Copyright 2008 by Tom Phillips

The state of Manipur in India and the nation of Macedonia in the Balkans have little or no contact with each other and little or no culture in common, but they share a common bond: they’ve been through the School of Hard Knocks. Fought over, carved up, traded back and forth and chronically exploited and trashed by bigger, stronger neighbors, these are “submerged, near-invisible lands,” surviving only because of their capacity to absorb punishment, and their perverse sense of their own existence. As such they are emblems of our own lives, aren’t they? That’s what Yoshiko Chuma seems to imply in the latest “Page Out of Order” in her series of multi-media theater explorations, this one subtitled “M to M” – Macedonia to Manipur. It’s a trip.

“M to M” involves half-a-dozen dancer-actors, as many films, a recorded soundtrack plus live music by a three-piece bamboo flute band, and a soulful Japanese vocalist, Sizzle Ohtaka. Its central device is a cubic metal frame, carried and pushed around the stage by the performers, which serves as a doorway, a window, a proscenium, a slowly spinning top, a wall to cast shadows on, and a multi-sided screen for the films. The action begins slowly, with the performers walking around the cube in front of screens showing everyday scenes from Manipur – a tangle of telephone wires, a flock of birds, kids playing soccer, a sword dance. This is intercut with a narrative of sorts – three performers sitting on boxes, earnestly exchanging facts, figures and anecdotes about the place, the kind of chat you might hear in a youth hostel. (When you buy a kilo of heroin in Manipur, they throw in a nine-millimeter pistol for protection. Oh, wow.)

There’s a certain type of traveler who scorns the official itinerary and the authorized history, and looks rather for meaning in random impressions, hearsay and whatever’s blowing in the wind. It’s true that you can often pick up a better sense of a place by peering into its alleys than poring over a guidebook. But there are limitations in this approach as well. Early in “M to M,” you wonder of this is going to be one of those well-intentioned but unenlightened essays in hippie history. But any such hopes or fears are inexorably deconstructed, as the piece gradually picks up speed and complexity. The cube turns around and over; Chuma herself performs a shadow dance inside, as scenes of urban demolition are projected onto its sides. The dancer and the film become one -- likewise the singer croons a live counterpoint to a film of a Manipur Brahman chanting and playing a stringed instrument. The youth-hostel conversation devolves into nonsense, and the young people lose themselves in comparing their geopolitical insights to various hits by the Rolling Stones. In the end, they’re busy sketching out the script for a political thriller they hope to film in the capital of Macedonia, while a lone dancer is left on a bare stage, wandering around disoriented to the sound of constant gunfire.

Sizzle Ohtaka has the last word. Her song is in Japanese and I didn’t understand a word of it, but the modulated sob in her voice, and the mournful grace in her manner reminded me of Lotte Lenya, long ago in Brecht and Weill’s “Threepenny Opera.” Just like “The Black Freighter,” or “Surabaya Johnny,” this was a lamentation for the billions who have to live history rather than shape it or film it, the dishonored graduates of the School of Hard Knocks.

Yoshiko Chuma has been at this "Page Out of Order" project for nearly thirty years, and if she isn’t a master of all the arts that go into it, she knows where to find the masters. Among them here were theater director Ralph Lee, who designed the cube device, filmmaker Milcho Manchevski, who captured the humanity and inhumanity of Balkan conflicts in his 1995 film “Before the Rain,” and lighting designer Rie Ono, who choreographed a dizzying array of changes and effects, with light and shadow springing from every direction . Among the performers, singer Ohtaka was a mesmerizing presence, physically as well as vocally. Steven Reker’s dancing looked both effortless and urgently felt. And Han’nya Teikoko, the shakuhachi trio, blew up a storm.

“M to M,” by its nature, will not fit most people’s conceptions of history, theater, protest or art. But that’s probably the point. The page may be out of order, but praise is not.

Copyright 2008 by Tom Phillips