Eighty years after World War II, how can the performing arts inherit memories of war and pave the way for dialogue with others? Presented in 2024 by Jun Tsutsui, director of the performance group dracom, Performing the Cemetery draws on extensive research and interviews surrounding Osaka’s former Sanadayama Army Cemetery. This pioneering work stands as an experimental endeavor to address these questions.

Japan’s oldest and largest war cemetery, established in 1871, contains approximately 5,000 tombstones of military personnel and others involved in the war, along with five shared tombs and a columbarium with over 8,000 remains. In stark contrast to values of patriotic duty and glorification of the wardead, Tsutsui turns instead to personal memories and histories, creating six vignettes spanning from the Seinan War (1877) to present day. Here, the audience witnesses the unfolding of modern Japan through fragmented, personal histories.

The structure of this performance is distinct, with audience members drawing a raffle to determine the sequence in which the vignettes are performed. Following the initial showing, an interactive dialogue with the audience takes place, after which the performance is presented once again. Of the six short pieces, only five are staged in each performance—leaving one part of the story always unseen. By arbitrarily shifting how the narrative is delivered, this work challenges the audience’s perceptions, revealing the precarity of storytelling within history.