Norimizu Ameya (飴屋法水): From Underground Theater to Art to Post-Disaster Theater

Introduction

No figure in contemporary Japanese theater defies categorization quite like Norimizu Ameya (飴屋法水). Underground theater sound man, director, visual artist, pet shop owner, and — as of 2014 — Kishida Kunio Drama Award winner, Ameya has followed a career path so wildly unconventional that his arrival at Japan's most prestigious playwriting prize feels both improbable and, in retrospect, inevitable. He received the 58th Kishida Prize for Blue Sheet (ブルーシート, also presented in English as Blue Tarp), a work created with high school students in Iwaki, Fukushima Prefecture, in the aftermath of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami.

Born in 1961, Ameya has spent over four decades testing the boundaries of what art can be and what performance can do. Blue Sheet represents perhaps the most extraordinary convergence of his lifelong concerns: the human body, the place of performance, and the question of what it means to perform in a world where the ground beneath your feet has literally shifted.

Early Life and Career

Ameya's artistic career began in Tokyo's underground theater. In 1978 he joined Juro Kara's Jokyo Gekijo, where he was in charge of sound. In 1984 he formed Tokyo Grand Guignol, which brought him a cult following, and in 1987 he founded M.M.M., whose "SKIN" series explored mechanical apparatus and the human body in a cyberpunk style. This early attention to the body would remain a foundation of much of what he did subsequently.

After 1990 Ameya left theater for visual art, working with the collaborative unit Technocrat on subjects such as blood transfusion, artificial fertilization, and selective breeding. He showed Public Semen at the 1995 Venice Biennale, then paused his art activities and opened a pet shop in Higashi-Nakano, Tokyo, breeding and selling various animals. In 1997 he published a book on living with animals.

In 2005 he returned to art with a performance in which he spent 24 days locked in a 1.8-meter white box. He then returned to the stage as well, directing Oriza Hirata's Transfer Student (2007) with real high school students and Sarah Kane's 4.48 Psychosis for Festival/Tokyo in 2009.

The Kishida Prize-Winning Work

Then came Blue Sheet (ブルーシート), and everything crystallized.

The title names an everyday object, the blue plastic tarp. Festival/Tokyo's English title for the work was Blue Tarp.

Ameya created Blue Sheet with ten students of Fukushima Prefectural Iwaki Sogo High School, a school affected by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. It was performed on the school grounds in January 2013, for only two days.

The published script is summarized as ten high school students struck by the disaster, whose voices echo as they confirm that they are alive. Festival/Tokyo described the students struggling to come to terms with an absent classmate.

The award showed that the Kishida Prize could go to a work created with high school students and first performed on a school's grounds. Hakusuisha published the script in April 2014, together with a second piece, 「教室」.

Theatrical Style and Philosophy

Ameya's artistic philosophy is defined by several core principles.

Site Specificity: Ameya has made works for particular places. Blue Sheet was first performed on the grounds of the students' own school, and Iriguchi-Dekuchi (2012) grew out of fieldwork on the Kunisaki Peninsula in Oita. Place does not tie the work down entirely, however: in 2015 Festival/Tokyo revived Blue Sheet with the original cast on the grounds of a former school in Toshima, Tokyo.

Non-Professional Performers: Ameya frequently works with people who are not trained actors. He cast high school students in Transfer Student and Blue Sheet, and foreign residents of Japan in 4.48 Psychosis.

Engaging with Disaster: A publisher's account describes Ameya as having faced the problem of disaster through Blue Sheet and his activities with Grand Guignol Mirai.

Intermediality: Throughout his career, Ameya has refused to be confined to a single medium. Sound, theater, visual art, and writing are all available to him as tools, and he moves between them as the project demands.

Physicality and Presence: From his work with M.M.M. onward, the human body has been a central concern of Ameya's work.

Major Works

Ameya's career encompasses an extraordinarily diverse range of works:

Blue Sheet (ブルーシート, 2013) — The Kishida Prize-winning work created with Iwaki Sogo High School students.
"SKIN" series — M.M.M. works on mechanical apparatus and the human body.
Public Semen (1995) — Shown at the Venice Biennale.
Transfer Student (2007) — His production of Oriza Hirata's play with real high school students.
4.48 Psychosis (2009) — His production of Sarah Kane's play for Festival/Tokyo.

Legacy and Influence

Ameya's receipt of the Kishida Prize placed a work created with high school students and performed outdoors at their school among the prize's winners.

Blue Sheet is also part of Japanese theater's response to the 2011 disaster, created with and performed by students from a school the disaster had affected.

Ameya's career also demonstrates that artistic integrity does not require staying within the boundaries of a single discipline. His movement from underground theater to visual art, to a pet shop, and to a high school's grounds in Fukushima models a kind of artistic freedom that is both inspiring and challenging to emulate.

How to Experience Their Work

If you are interested in exploring Japanese theatrical scripts, including works that push the boundaries of what theater can be, visit the Gikyoku Toshokan script library to search for plays by cast size, duration, and genre. The script of Blue Sheet is published in Japanese by Hakusuisha (2014). Ameya's work reminds us that the most powerful theater sometimes emerges from the most unexpected places.

Norimizu Ameya (飴屋法水): Career, Blue Sheet and Kishida Prize