NOW PLAYING: Nekomachi — Cat Town
daisydoze’s latest brings the work of poet Sakutaro Hagiwara to life in the Tokyo neighborhood where it was set
The work of daisydoze is no stranger to NoPro’s long term readership, and their blending of site-specific performance and audio journeys hits so many of our buttons that just about every instance of a Daisydoze show causes the intense FOMO amongst at least one member of our senior staff.
And this time, there’s cats. After a fashion.
Nekomachi — Cat Town or Catville is the latest from the talented and stylish company, adapting evoking the work of poet Sakutaro Hagiwara into a journey through Shimokitazawa, a “bohemian” part of Tokyo where folks go to hunt for vintage clothes and vinyl. Known as Tokyo’s most walkable neighborhood, it’s primed for the location based work that Daisydoze has become synonymous with.
Deep within Shimokitazawa lies a mysterious, cat-haunted realm. Under the full moon, a poet, searching for his lost romanticism, wanders the changing town. Following the tracks, sensing unseen eyes upon him, he inadvertently slips into a strange, parallel world, a world where cats reign.
Things once invisible begin to appear —
An immersive journey through the city unfolding in story and dance.
We needed to know more, and daisydoze Artistic Director Yui Takeshima, was willing to let the cats out of the bag about the show which opens on September 20th and runs through October 5th.
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NO PROSCENIUM: Tell us a little bit about your experience! What’s it about? What makes it immersive?
Yui Takeshima: Cat Town is a dreamy journey into a parallel world. Guided by the disembodied voice of The Poet, the piece evokes a realm beyond the reach of the ordinary senses. Cat Town marks the latest evolution of the daisydoze process; always site-specific, we strive to expose the mytho-poetic history and lore of our settings, laying bare the dream-rich substrate beneath the familiar world of the everyday.
As participants make their way between Shimokitazawa Station and neighboring Setagaya Daita Station, the physical environment merges with hyper-real elements of audio storytelling and live performance, culminating in a stunning spectacle in a space that is ordinarily closed to the public.
For this experience, the audio component is only available in Japanese, but we provide a written explanation in English. The performance elements are non-verbal and designed to transcend language.
NP: What was the inspiration for your upcoming experience?
YT: This project came to life through a series of remarkable coincidences.
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It started, strangely, over 100 kilometers away, when a museum in Maebashi, Gunma prefecture, invited us to create a sound installation. Maebashi has been called “The city of greenery, water, and poets”, and as we were exploring the town, we kept hearing people speaking about legendary local poet Sakutaro Hagiwara, as if he were a dear and familiar friend.
Just three days into excavating the history of Maebashi, we were invited to participate in Moon Art Night Shimokitazawa festival. I was stunned to discover that even though Sakutaro Hagiwara was born in 1886 in Maebashi, he later moved to Shimokitazawa, where he passed away in 1942, very near the site of our performance.
Both projects seemed to demand that we explore his work as their central motif. Cat Town is directly inspired by his masterpiece of the same name, written in Shimokitazawa in 1935 following a vision of a world-behind-the-world “where only the spirits of cats live”. The Maebashi project evolved into a deeper exploration the poet’s formative experiences, with the audience walking the town alongside him, experiencing the world through his eyes at the intersection of the poetry and the past.
Cat Town builds on a style we pioneered earlier this year, when we presented The Letters in collaboration with the city of Shibuya. That was our first time using smart-phone app technology to create an experience across multiple settings, allowing us to juxtapose history, performance, narrative, and physical reality.
NP: What do you think fans of immersive will find most interesting about this latest experience?
YT: As a fan of immersive theater myself, what I love most is escaping ordinary reality and being transported into realms beyond my ordinary imagination. We designed this show with that in mind. But Cat Town does more than just engage the senses; it delivers a full-body experience of traversing a waking dream, revealing the transcendent in the midst of the mundane. Not limited to the confines of a single venue, this show merges the town with the imagination to paint a vivid experience, sure to linger for a long time.
NP: Once you started designing and testing what did you discover about this experience that was unexpected?
YT: We recently completed our first full rehearsal. Walking through the city at night and seamlessly slipping into the world of performance turned out to be an unexpected discovery for me. It felt as if an entirely new form of immersive theatre had suddenly revealed itself.
What struck me most was how hidden depths emerged from the living stage of the city. Viewed through the lens of the work, familiar streets opened themselves, revealing rich layers of unseen meaning.
And I realized that this sensation is deeply connected to the essence of Japanese culture. People often cite concepts such as wabi-sabi or yūgen, yet their true essence is not easily grasped. I felt that perhaps this immersive performance could deliver an immediate felt experience of the ineffable atmosphere to which those concepts allude.
NP: What can fans who are coming to this, or thinking about coming to this, do to get into the mood of the experience?
YT: There are different ways to enjoy this piece. Some people may enjoy learning a bit about the history of Shimokitazawa, or seek out Sakutarō Hagiwara’s Cat Town — although it may not be very easy to find an English translation.
Whether you prefer to be well-informed or enjoy plunging headlong into the experience with no preconceptions, just be prepared to be surprised and delighted.
Discover the latest immersive events, festivals, workshops, and more at our new site EVERYTHING IMMERSIVE, home of NoPro’s show listings.
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