APAF Exhibition Performance"フレ フレ Ostrich!! Hayupang Die-Bow-Ken！"Response to Audience Feedback
After the APAF Exhibition performances, audience members were asked to give feedback in the form of questions, comments, and so on, which were then used to tweak performances that followed from the next day on. These feedback sessions not only figured as opportunities for the artists to grow, but also as chances for audience members to share ideas with each other, as well as test runs for new forms of rapport between an artwork and its audience.
Here, the three members of the work’s directorial team (James Harvey Estrada, Aokid, and Masashi Nukata), along with APAF Director Junnosuke Tada, respond to selected questions that were left unanswered.
Q1: How do you see the participatory aspects of online and in-person audiences converging or diverging as virtual events become more common?
James Harvey Estrada: During these times of the pandemic, when we are physically distant and isolated from one another, we discover new ways of coming together as well as new modes of experiencing something together. We cross borders, time, and spaces with the use of technology.
I keep on thinking how we can sustain this format of a virtual and physical hybrid performance that entails a new kind of audienceship, and if there will be a need for this kind of performance format once the pandemic is over. I will continue to learn, research, and develop these new-found relationships between performance and projected, digitized real-time bodies. Maybe, this is just a rehearsal for the future in which physical and virtual performances converge. Maybe in the near future we will be performing with holograms or working with other remotely-transmitted performances, efficiently conquering time and space as well as crafting audience experiences based on these possibilities.
Q2: Mr. Nukata’s music had a very “Japanese” sound to it, but how did it resonate with the non-Japanese audience members?
James Harvey Estrada: I think music is a universal language. Nukata-san’s music can be viewed as being distinctly Japanese but I’ve really enjoyed his music from the first day I heard it. I also like how he composed and arranged the music for the performance. Surprisingly, we have the same taste in music and we rarely argued about the musical treatment of the piece.
I also asked one of the Filipino audience members, who watched the show online, about what she thought of the music. She told me that she found it emotionally engaging. She was especially moved — became emotional and teary-eyed — by the musical progression of the scene where the ostrich is heading to the theater.
Q3: How was the story created? The virtual cooperation was wonderful.
James Harvey Estrada: I wrote this story around two years ago during the Philippine government’s bloody war against drugs. This story is very dear to my heart because it’s my personal prayer for the lives lost in the brutal fight against drugs.
I revisited this story and presented it to my Japanese collaborators. I asked their views and opinions and they found the story to have a universal appeal that mirrored humanity as a whole. We used this story as the base for the performance with hopes that perhaps when we confront the nightmares that we are currently facing, we will be able to have better dreams for the future of Asia and the world.
Q4: What was the most challenging in terms of finalizing the performance for the show?
Load-in came around and we still hadn’t been able to share the details of the performance to the entire production team. In the rehearsals after load-in, we prioritized working on structure and scene development, making sure that it was clear to both the production members and the audience. If the performance had taken place just in the theater, the structure would had been simple and clear cut. But it wasn’t until we connected the physical theater space with the online space that we were able to finally see the entire scope of the performance and get to finalizing the structure of the work.
After, showing the work for the second and third time, we were able to further brush up the storyline and do some fine-tuning such as defining the context for the dance scenes.
But this actually went against what the project set out to do, which was to bring together seemingly disparate ideas and avoid, as much as possible, forcing those elements to fit into a comprehensive whole. After loading in, we did our best to quickly finish the work in the limited time we had. I’m not sure if we had enough time or if we fully succeeded in bringing together the physical and online elements of the performance. We all did our best in the limited circumstances which was challenging.
Q5: What do the goats in the performance represent in the context of Japan?
Aokid: I think it more or less represents Japanese citizens, or perhaps from a different perspective they could be seen as minorities. Some of the audience members may have felt as the performance was taking place that their situation was similar to that of the goats in that they were being exploited in some way. Others may have realized this after some thought about their experience. For me it was the latter. Perhaps, like the goats in the performance I too was exploited without my knowing. But rather than feeling sorry for yourself, it’s important in these moments to be able to see things in a positive light — ask ourselves what we can do, what we change — and take action.
Q6: If you could sum up your process for this piece in one short phrase, what would it be?
Aokid: Open-house exhuberance.
Q7: What does “フレ フレ Ostrich!! Hayupang Die-Bow-Ken！” mean? What language is that?
Aokid: We combined the languages our three directors grew up with (Tagalog, Japanese, and English) with the idea that the title would act as a gateway into a different culture.
The Japanese “フレフレ!” (fure fure, an encouraging shout) is meant to cheer on the real ostriches that actually escaped into the streets in the Philippines. It can also be the English “flee” or “free.”
“Hayupang” literally means “animal,” but apparently the Tagalog word has a bunch of other nuances. Leaving this part of the title in Tagalog conveys the inner implications of the original script, which was written in that language.
“Die-Bow-Ken” is about how the ostriches’ escape and James’s original script are both kinds of adventures. Plus, making it sound like a comic book — “daibouken” (big adventure) — reflected how we wanted the piece to seem like a Japanese manga based on a Philippine story. The reason we used the English alphabet instead of kanji characters was to highlight the sounds. Break the word down further and you get “die” (death), “bow” (as in archery), and “ken” (knowledge or understanding). We worked together with the interpreting team to create and finetune the title.
Q8: In the second half of the story, online audience members are presented with a poll that gives them different options to choose from. Does each answer lead to a different ending?
Masashi Nukata: Regardless of what they choose, the ending is the same. This was meant to give the Tokyo audience in the theater a sense of powerlessness, as they sat on the sidelines watching a scene unfold that alluded to the mass killings orchestrated by President Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines.
Q9: I really enjoyed the music. Can you elaborate on how it was created?
Masashi Nukata: Most of the music was created during our online Zoom rehearsals, either by myself or Rob Rusdiana.
We devised the music by first sharing what we wanted to achieve artistically for that scene. We would then compose based on the performance, or vice-versa. Also, Aokid and vocalist Bunny Cadag would often offer specific input on how they thought the music should be approached.
Having multiple musicians involved from the early stages of creation allowed us more opportunities to discuss the music, which I believe informed the final performance.
Also, there were moments during the performance when myself or Robi would deviate from what we had originally planned musically and start improvising.
Q10: I felt there was a sense of equality between the online and theater audiences, even though the options that were given or the manner of participation were necessarily different. Was there any discussion surrounding this?
MS: Since the quality of the experience is fundamentally different online and in the theater, we often discussed the direction for each viewing environment. It was like staging the same play with two different direction plans.
Eventually, we ended up with a clear distinction between active online participation and passive observation in the theater.
Although we didn’t really assign roles, director James Harvey Estrada led the online performance, and myself and Aokid took the initiative for moving the theater performance forward. This was especially true during the last week leading up to the show as we used the remaining time to further brush up the work.
Q11: It seemed that the premise of the work was that the audience members would have completely different experiences online and in the theater. Is there anything in particular that you took into consideration for the online viewing experience?
Because of the participatory nature of the online experience, we made sure to facilitate in a way that the audience members would find enjoyable, rather than it being forced or uncomfortable. For example, we wanted our online audience to really experience in a direct way the progression of the story, to realize how audience participation influences the work in an important way, and to be able to purely enjoy the experience of exploring their voices and bodies. With this in mind, we gave clear instructions to the online audience on what to do at each stage; as a team we also discussed the type of language we should use when engaging with our audience so that the tasks wouldn’t feel like work.
To be honest, I was anxious on how the performance would turn out. But in hindsight I suppose the online participation went well: participating from home via online took away the unease of being seen by other audience members in a theater setting, created this excitement of being together with people from all around the world, and enabled a unique experience made possible through Zoom.
Under the guidance of technical director Yuya Ito, we made final adjustments up to right before the performance, trying to figure out how the screen should be configured for our audience to see. Since the online audience has a fixed point-of-view compared to those in the theater, we had to think about the order in which information should be presented — a process that was unfamiliar to us.
Q12: As its “egg” metaphor demonstrated, the play was, in the truest sense, an ever-evolving work. Where will the piece go from here? Do you have any ideas about how to build long-standing relationships with frequent and on-going collaborations that, like the APAF exhibition, transcend a variety of boundaries?
Junnosuke Tada: As we form an on-going network with past participants at APAF, we would like to be able to offer support in their successes and challenges.
One of the APAF Exhibition directors, James, and one of the APAF Lab facilitators, Arsita, were participants from last year’s APAF Lab. In the past, work initially created for the Exhibition has gone on to evolve in different directions, and new collaborations are always emerging between people who have met through this program. It’s difficult for APAF proper to provide on-going support for a single artwork, but we are working toward partnerships with Tokyo Festival, foreign platforms, and so on, as places for these works to go.
APAF Exhibition is a program geared toward creators’ growth through borderless creation. I’m looking forward to seeing what comes out of the experiences the artists had with this work. When it comes to cultivating talent or engaging in international exchange, Japan’s performing arts scene is still underdeveloped. I think getting the word out about experiments in this vein will only make support for them continue to increase.
