Ayaka Ono & Akira Nakazawa / Spacenotblank

The drama that unfolds on-screen: Is it a film or a play?

Plays and films seldom intersect. Generally, the former is performed live, while the latter is a screening of a pre-recorded video. In this work, Views, the audience witnesses the collision of these two artforms.

This work is created by the up-and-coming collective Spacenotblank and Shuntaro Matsubara, an emerging playwright and winner of the Kishida Prize for Drama. Spacenotblank, which consists of Ayaka Ono and Akira Nakazawa, creates works rooted in the communication that arises from specific environments and relationships, while exploring new ideas and techniques in the performing arts. The two have continuously been working with Matsubara since 2019, and in this, their fourth collaboration, they stage the performance of a play and the screening of a film in real time. Of the eight performers, two play the role of the camera. The remaining six performers act out a drama written by Matsubara, while the audience views the performance through the perspective of a camera in a “movie” projected onto a screen on stage. The dual experience that awaits the audience evokes the feeling of watching a play and film at the same time.

Words, suspense, urgency, playfulness—Matsubara’s play is a collage of various meanings and impressions, while the direction by Ayaka Ono & Akira Nakazawa / Spacenotblank rapidly deconstructs space and body. What will be the upshot of this drama that unfolds on-stage, this reworked relationship between theater and film? This collaboration will lead you to a new state. Lose yourself in it.