Suzuki + Toga Arts Park

Space as Suzuki understands it is not just the stage on which the performer walks, nor the intangible entity which they attempt to control, and which the body occupies. Theatrical space refers as much to the total environment and context within which the event happens as it does to the actor-audience arrangement or the body alignment that the training enables so precisely. As such, theatre neds to extend outwards and be coordinated with the natural or local habitat. To attain this, Suzuki has collaborated with one of the world’s leading architects, Arata Isozaki.

The task of redesigning the old sanbo (as the farmhouse is known in Japanese) fell to Arata Isozaki. Like Suzuki, Isozaki is equally recognised as a writer and theorist who values the explanation of his work for cognoscenti and broader public alike. The fact that artists exploit and update traditional models, creating bold, challenging art with an explicit cultural and social purpose that can be defined loosely within a postmodern aesthetic suited him for this reinvention.

Suzuki wanted to recreate ‘a space in which people actually lived’. Yet what Suzuki and Isozaki managed to forge was an even more difficult concept and a true hybrid - a theatre space that was both domestic and sacred, where the daily and extra-daily could exist. 

In 1982, the farmhouse theatre was reopened, renovated by Isozaki to appear as it does today. To this building Isozaki added a new entrance lobby, ‘a space of light’, where you take off and leave your shoes before passing through a small covered corridor into the dark interior of the sanbo. 

Inside the sanbo you are struck first by the dominating black aluminium stage floor. It is central to the dark atmosphere that conjures the other-worldliness of noh performances which Isozaki wanted to create in his original exhibit.

Marianne McDonald described the mood inside the farmhouse itself - 

All is painted black and the stage is lit by low-intensity lamps, suggesting the original illuminations of Noh stages by candlelight or lanterns. There is also a philosophical components to this low lighting. Noh drama often showed the emergence of a divinity of ghost from the darkness, as it were the primeval womb of the world. This sense of oneness with the world was also the experience of Greek drama for its original audience.

The Greek style amphitheatre is the main focus of the park. It lies on the east side of the main road, overlooking a lake. On stage are two pillars, holding up nothing except the heavens and serving no direct function, but operating as a visual reminder of a noh theatre’s four pillars that support the stage roof. The theatre has a steeply raked auditorium to keep the audience close to the action, with dressing rooms and storage space located underneath. Two hanamichis (or runways) stretch from both sides of the front edge of the stage to the lake’s banks. The two hanamichis  allow long dramatic entrances and exits from either bank of the lake, and lead away from, rather than into, the audience.

Nine rows of seats sweep in wide semicircles with a total seating capacity of around 800. As members of the audience you enter the top of the auditorium by one of four points and look over the stage and lake towards the trees, which is reflected in the water. Beyond rises the wooded slope of the other valley side, providing a natural backdrop. The theatre itself nestles within trees and is approached by a gravel path, creating a further sense of isolation from civilisation. The whole is open to the elements and nature’s sounds and smells.

The scenography for performances outdoors and in the indoor spaces has a similar openness, though in a visual rather than public sense. The architecture and shaped natural environment become the main focus of the scenography. The scenography of the amphitheatre within the environment encourages you to look and observes, viewing the harmonious integration of man and nature. 

SUZUKI_Philosophy of Theatre

Culture is the body_Tadashi Suzuki

In my opinion, a cultured society is one in which the perceptive and expressive abilities of its people are cultivated through the use of their innate animal energy. Such animal energy fosters the sense of security and trust needed for healthy communication in human relationships and the communities they form. If we consider the origins of civilization, we can see that its rise was intrinsically tied to the bodily functions. Its development may even be interpreted as the gradual sensory expansion of the eyes, ears, nose, tongue and skin. Inventions like the telescope and microscope, for example, arose from the human aspiration and endeavor to see more, radicalizing the sense of sight. Over time, the accumulation of such achievements has come to be called civilization.

Japanese Noh, on the other hand, survives as a form of pre-modern theatre that employs almost no non-animal energy. In the case of music, for example, most modern theatre utilizes digital equipment to electronically reproduce pre-recorded or live sound through amplifiers and loudspeakers, whereas in the Noh, the voices of the principle actors and the chorus, as well as the sound of the instruments played on stage are projected directly to the audience. Noh costumes and masks are made by hand, and the stage itself is built according to pre-modern carpentry techniques.

A fundamental technique and theory of Architecture

I. To act, one must have a point of view.

“Acting” is the formal act or experiment that tries to convey a particular point of view, derived from an investigation of human behavior and relationships. It can also be seen as a kind of game that intrinsically motivates us—visually through the human physique and aurally through the spoken word.

II. For acting to begin, one must have an audience.

A heightened awareness of displaying one’s body and communicating written language can only be achieved when another person observes it. Even though actors may not be able to see themselves or the others sitting in front of them, they can still be aware of a presence—be it human, animal or god—that is watching their movements and hearing their language.

III. To sustain acting, an awareness of the invisible body is required.

The human body has certain essential needs that must be met to support life. Through disciplined, integrated development of these three parameters, the body gains strength and agility, the voice acquires range and capacity and an awareness of the “other” grows. Such work develops the expressive potency needed to transmit the actor’s point of view. It follows, then, that the core requirements for the art of acting lie in disciplines created to deepen an awareness of these three crucial, interrelated, “invisible” phenomena.


Isozaki + Suzuki_Theatre Architecture

Isozaki’s designs made concrete Suzuki’s belief in the need to rediscover the spiritual dimension of the theatre inherent in these two modes of performance. Suzuki reasons that obsession with naturalisma nd human psychology has outed metaphysical qualities that he wants to reinstate. As well as the lighting and colour tones, the sense of a sacred place is encouraged by the intimacy of the whole design. Most of the audience of approximatel 150 sit directly facing the twenty-foot-square stage on two rows of tatami (rice straw) mats, but the thrust means that a minority view tha action side-on. Everyone huddles closely together on the mats, evoking the informal ‘lived-in’ atmosphere to which Suzuki aspired.

Suzuki’s definition of ‘local’ refers as much to the indigenous people as it does to the environment. For him, artistic practice has to be integrated into its community. This is partily pragmatic, to provide the infrastructure to support visiting audiences with accomodation, food and transport. But more vitally it emphasises the social dimensino of Suzuki’s and SCOT’s work:

There should be a close relationship between the artists and their social environment, so they can affect positively.

Cooperation with an audience is fundamental to all theatre practice, particularly if its size is as isolaed as Toga. 

TOGA ARTS PARK_Toga, Japan

Toga Art Park, Japan.

Situated in the south-eastern tip of prefecture, Toga Village (Toyama), with its population of only one thousand, is loved by performing arts professionals and fans from all over the world.  As of November 1, 2004 eight towns and villages, (Johana, Taira, Kamitaira, Toga, Inami, Inokuchi, Fukuno, and Fukumitsu) merged into a new city called Nanto City.

The Toga Arts Park contains a mixture of theatre spaces, including a noh-like farmhouse theatre and a spectacular outdoor amphi-theatre overlooking a lake. Crucially, it has provided a ‘home’ for SCOT. The site has grown into a complex of lodgings, rehearsal rooms, and assorted performing spaces, including a studio theatre, a second gassho-zukuri theatre, a black box theatre and an outdoor “rock” theatre.

Toga Art Park was established to encourage the theatre arts, drama, music and dance cultivated through the holding of the internationally-acclaimed Toga Spring Arts Festival and Toga Summer Arts Programme. The park incorporates two outdoor theatres and various indoor rehearsal and performances facilities, including the Shin-Toga Mountain Studio, designed by world-famous architect Arata Isozaki. Through its hosting of international events, Toga Art Park is known throughout Japan and around the world as a centre of dramatic arts activities.

The construction of the park in Toga was an on-going long-term and organic process spanning three decades. Buildings arose according to the influx of new funds and new demands, be they from SCOT, the villagers or an American university. Although each space serves its own specific function, they are all unified in their design by Isozaki and their location within the landscape.

SCOT + Festivals
In 1976, Tadashi Suzuki relocated his theatre troupe, the Waseda Shogekijo—which for the previous ten years had spearheaded the new theatre movement in Japan—from its home in central Tokyo to Toga, a remote village in the mountains of western Japan and when they renamed themselves the Suzuki Company of Toga (SCOT).

Following Suzuki’s notions of the universality of theatre, this special location played host for many years (1982-1999) to the Toga International Arts Festival, which offered concentrated workshops in the Suzuki Method of Actor Training created by Suzuki being learnt by performing artists throughout the world, and invited theatre companies from around the world not only to give performances but to live, work, and collaborate with each other. In the true meaning of the word “festival” the diverse cultures of these groups were highlighted and celebrated. And while acknowledging each other’s cultural similarities and differences, the stimulus provided by such encounters spawned entirely new notions of theatre and undoubtedly many new forms of culture.

In 1982 the Toga International Performing Arts Festival marked its opening event with 12 theater groups from 6 countries and attracted over 13,000 spectators. Toga Festival lasted until 1999 and in the following year was replaced by the Toga Summer Arts Program which includes a program that trains young people as drama directors or performers. 


Noh Performances

Noh is a major form of classical Japanese musical drama that has been performed since the 14th century. Many characters are masked, with men playing male and female roles. The repertoire is normally limited to a specific set of historical plays. A Noh performance often lasts all day and consists of five Noh plays interspersed with shorter, humorous kyōgen pieces.

While the field of Noh performance is extremely codified with an emphasis on tradition rather than innovation, some performers do compose new plays or revive historical ones that are not a part of the standard repertoire. Works blending Noh with other theatrical traditions have also been produced.

Isozaki + Suzuki

Arata Isozaki

Born in 1931. He has been active in curating exhibitons of architecture, art and culture, and has recieived many awards, including the Japanese Culture and Design Award (1993). He believes in the validity of quotation and the reuse of successful design elements and themes from different periods and styles, a recycling which he calls ‘maniera’. Chosen elements are blended to make a coherent, autonomous whole in works that must always be responsive and adapted to their cultural context. Such theories and practices have made him an influential architect world-wide.

Tadashi Suzuki

Tadashi Suzuki is the founder and director of the Suzuki Company of Toga (SCOT) based in Toga Village, located in the mountains of Toyama prefecture. Suzuki’s methodology for approaching theatre and performance comes from understanding ancient Greek theatre and experiencing the Japanese 

performance styles of Noh and Kabuki, both of which emphasize strength in traditional values, discipline, and physical control. Not just one of the world’s foremost theatre directors, Suzuki is also a seminal thinker and practitioner whose work has a powerful influence on theatre everywhere. Suzuki’s primary concerns include: the structure of a theatre group, the creation and use of theatrical space, and the overcoming of cultural and national barriers in the interest of creating work that is truly universal. 

His philosophies concerning the humanistic relationship between man and earth, one that defies spirituality in the traditional sense of the term, manifest in rigorous training practices that demand an extreme level of body control and physical exertion.

 Together Isozaki and Suzuki have designed and built theaters, rehearsal rooms and art complexes.