rerun: suzue toshiro's my friend has come

SEASON TWO: SUN CHASER

SUZUE TOSHIRO’S MY FRIEND HAS COME

July 23-25, 2015

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S E A S O N T W O : S U N C H A S E R

HAMLETby Jay Crisostomo IVFebruar y 20-22, 27-28, March 6-8

NEAR YET FAR, FAR YET NEAR: A TWIN BILL OF PLAYSby Paolo Apagalang & Enrique EstagleMarch 27-28, April 10-11

END OF THE GALLOWSDirection & Script by Jay Crisostomo IVJune 26-28, July 3-4, 10-11, 17-19

IT’S APRIL, WHAT ARE WE DOING HERE?Script by Rolando TinioDirection by Ricardo AbadSeptember 18-19, 25-26, October 2-4

THE VELVETEEN RABBITScript by Joaquin CerdasProduction Design by Claudine DelfinDecember 2015

M Y F R I E N D H A S C O M ES E Q U E N C E O F S C E N E S

Scene 1 Me hears strange sounds: scratches and gurgling water

Scene 2 My Friend arrives in a bicycle: re-connecting seems to be a problem as the two do not seem to comprehend what each one is trying to say.

Scene 3 While My Friend sleeps, Me wonders if the persimmon tree outside is alive or dead.

Scene 4 Me and My Friend find common memories to share but a playful kendo match brings tearful memories from My Friend, a reaction Me cannot understand.

Scene 5 Me enacts another memory in a clubhouse gym where My Friend once embarrassed him.

Scene 6 The two relish, with laughter and a little shame, the memory of the clubhouse incident. My Friend finds a chance to recount his own painful memory but Me is too preoccupied with his own worries to sympathize with his friend’s plight. My Friend wonders if Me will ever understand him.

Scene 7 My Friend gets a chance to narrate his experience of drowning and its aftermath. Perhaps this gesture would prompt an emotional response from Me. But Me is unsure how to react.

Scene 8 My Friend gets a chance to finally tell me why he came to visit. But only after a violent kendo match. Me does not seem to appreciate the revelation and continues the kendo match. But the sounds of scratches and gurgling water again haunt Me. Seeing this, My Friend reveals what the sounds mean. Me is relieved.

Scene 9 After a playful argument where no one wins, My Friend is set to leave. He takes photos, drinks tea, feels whole again, and with Me in another room, takes his bike and leaves. Me returns, finds My Friend gone, and pretends he is sti l l there. He engages in a kendo match, the image of his friend fixed in his mind.

D I R E C T O R ’ S N O T E SM Y F R I E N D T O S H I R O

S uzue Toshiro and I first met in 2007 during a meeting of the Asia-

Pacific Bureau of Theater Schools at the Shanghai Theater Academy. While sipping coffee during a conference break, I asked him if I could read one of his plays in English translation. Toshiro bent down, reached for his bag, and produced an anthology of Japanese plays that included one of his plays, the award-winning Firef lies. I read the play that evening, l iked it very much for its sensitivity and nuance, and told him the net day that I would direct it for Tanghalang Ateneo one of these days. I did just that five years later, and got a Japan Foundation grant to invite him to the Philippines to watch the show.

Before he left for Japan, Toshiro gave me, as a parting gift, two of his unpublished plays in English translation and said he would like me to direct these sometime in the

future. When Jay Crisostomo asked me to direct a production for DITO, the first play that came to my mind was My Friend Has Come, one of Toshiro’s two parting gift. I quickly wrote Toshiro to ask his permission to stage the play. He responded with great enthusiasm and sought no royalties, but to send him, in exchange, a poster and playbill . I decided to send a video as well. Sadly, Toshiro could not revisit the Philippines this time owing to his tight schedule at the Toho School of Drama. My friend can’t come for My Friend Has Come.

Like Firef lies, My Friend Has Come is a difficult text to crack. That I am not immersed in Japanese culture adds to the difficulty, though my recent visit to Japan gave me a few insights on what the characters are going through. But enough is present in the text for me to sense the meaning behind the lines,

the beats, the images, and the sounds. I was moved when I first read the play, and so did the actors on our first reading. How to stage what we felt, given the non-linearity and the many symbolic representations of the text was another story altogether. Our reading may not be Japanese, more like the Japanese in Filipino eyes, but l ike Firef lies, the staging, I hope, would be one that Toshiro would find “refreshing.”

I hope audiences will muster the patience to receive the work, to seek neither a full narrative nor a logical progression of ideas, but to sense the moments of contact and separation that constitute the protocol of a kendo match.

I thank Ikarus and DITO for allowing me to direct this play - my first in this venue, the Japan Foundation for supporting key aspects of the production, Raffy Javier and Prince Mallari for coaching us on the kendo during the December run (and Masayoshi Corpusand Gerrard Catagan for the re-run), Hiroko Nagai for composing the koto pieces, and Harold Santos for performing these pieces

live as Hiroko’s alternate. My gratitude goes as well to Tanghalang Ateneo for sharing their l ights, and to the Ateneo Fine Arts for allowing a faculty member to practice what he teaches. I thank as well my actors, Sky and Mendy, for helping me discover the text, for expressing our notions on stage, and for keeping me company post practice; Julia Motoomull for being a most savvy stage manager, Rhem David who did the sound design and volunteered to operate the sound board, and to D Cortezano, our new light designer and all-around technical consultant who captured the rhythm of the play and joined me at the police station to report a hit and run; and Jay, Pepe and the DITO staff for everything else - set, costumes, props, technical, publicity, marketing, you name it.

My friend Toshiro thanks all of you, too.

Enjoy the show! It’s a different kind of play. And do invite your friends to come.

M Y F R I E N D H A S C O M E R E V I E W S

‘ M Y F R I E N D H A S C O M E ’ I S A W K W A R D , M O V I N G , B E A U T I F U LT H E P L A Y I S N O T P U S H Y A B O U T W H A T Y O U T A K E A W A Y F R O M I T . I T ’ S C O O L . I T ’ S Z E N

B Y C A R L O R I V E R A I V

Suzue Toshiro writes plays that challenge the viewer. “Firef lies,” a few years ago, forced audiences to evaluate what it meant to be lonely, to be disconnected from other humans, and how rituals and social conventions help and hinder our attempts to reach each other.

“My Friend Has Come,” which opened only Thursday and has its closing performance today, 8 p.m., at Dito: Bahay ng Sining, is similar in theme, but has a tighter focus and an additional layer of complexity.

Director Ricky Abad shows a keen eye for symbolism in this play, as l ittle things like a bottle of tea and a Persimmon tree acquire multiple meanings, not all apparent at first glance. I was particularly pleased with the minimalist aesthetic, something very true to the Japanese origins of the play.

TIGHT, NUANCED Spoilers ahead.

The true strength of the play is its tight, focused central relationship. The play begins with our protagonist writhing and all but insane on the f loor, raving about ants and dust. When his friend arrives on a bicycle, the play somehow manages to communicate that these two should be glad to see each other—yet their attempts to communicate and establish friendly gestures and rituals all backfire.

What follows is one of the most intensely physical performances I have ever seen on the stage. The play is unafraid to use and then subvert sexual comedy, to tell stories through body language, and to imply deeper levels of tragedy and connection beyond the surface meaning of a young man tormented


by a friend’s suicide.

It takes a nuanced play to be open to multiple interpretations, but “My Friend Has Come” manages it with one setting and two characters. Was there an undercurrent of homosexual attraction between the protagonists? Was the friend’s suicide driven by mental i l lness?

The beauty is that the audience gets to decide. “My Friend Has Come” is not pushy about what you take away from it. It’s cool. It’s Zen.

And yet it’s not afraid to shock. The Kendo matches are shockingly violent yet somehow vent malice rather than building it. The f lashback sex scene will have the audience squirming uncomfortably, but the real shock comes at an unexpected moment, casting a shadow on the characters’ friendship.

End of spoilers.

RESPECTFUL PORTRAYAL

“My Friend Has Come” accomplishes something only the best stories do: it manages to make you sympathize with characters who are objectively f lawed. It is a great feat to take a person you would not happily share a room with in real l ife and make you weep for him all the same.

Even at the end, the characters manage to grow without necessarily

finding peace or replacing their very real f laws with sunshine and rainbows. This is the beginning of a recovery, not the end, and this to me is a very respectful portrayal of grief. You don’t recover from crushing loss with an epiphany and a happy song. That’s not how real people work. The play gets this.

Young actors Sky Abundo and Miguel Almendras play their obviously taxing roles with fearlessness and dedication. Special credit should also be given to the live, authentic Japanese string music played throughout the play.

I was happier with “My Friend Has Come” than I was with other productions with 10 times the budget and publicity. It refuses to be formulaic, it challenges the audience, it makes you weep in a way that feels l ike real loss, and the ending is uncertain in a way that feels l ike real certainty. All with a minimalist aesthetic.

If you’re interested in a thinker’s play, in a story with nuanced symbolism, tight storytell ing and raw emotion, do yourself a favor and drop by Dito this weekend. I cannot promise that you will leave happy. I do promise that you will have grown a little, where it counts.

FROM PHILIPPINE DAILY INQUIRER, DECEMBER 13, 2014


U G L Y C R Y I N G O V E R S O M E T H I N G B E A U T I F U L : I K A R U S ’ M Y F R I E N D H A S C O M EB Y G U E L A N L U A R C A

When dear friends pass away, we’re all strained to confront the f leetingness and the unfairness of l ife, we become helpless and despairing; we cave in and feel more alone than ever. But Suzue Toshiro’s My Friend Has Come also shows the other side of mourning – the all-too-human pain that our dearly departed may also feel when they see us dumbfounded by their untimely loss. As if grieving alone isn’t depressing enough, to reveal the two-way exchange of sadness just makes things so much more freakin’ sad!

But like with all experiences of heartbreak and dealing

with the death of a loved one, our memories aren’t all full of the sob stuff. We recall the fun moments, the quirks and the naughtiness, the times of utter stupidity and hilarious embarrassments. And even dull, boring, everyday memories with you and your dearly departed all turn into precious, bittersweet keepsakes that’l l remind us how much we’ve loved.

This poignancy is at the very heart of Ricky Abad’s direction, and the sincerity with which he handles the play is what makes watching it such an important experience. Young theater actors Sky Abundo and Miguel


Almendras fil l the intimate space of Dito with skittish energy, boyish naughtiness, and gripping moments of emotional vulnerability. Almendras especially has this break-down scene that he plays with so much honesty and simplicity – it can make any macho man ugly-cry!

The set design by Claudine Delfin and Jay Crisostomo IV (who runs Dito and has directed all of Ikarus’ plays so far) goes for the iconic Japanese minimalism, thereby allowing the stage to be a bare canvass on which Abundo and Almendras can burst their hearts out with full vividness and color. And the live music by Hiroko Nagai and Harold Santos on the koto is a study in sound and silence that echoes the highs and lows of grief and moving on.

The play isn’t your typical entertainment – the dialogue’s not always clear; sometimes it sounds more like abstract poetry than everyday speech. You can’t always understand what exactly Abundo and

Almendras are talking about. This is indie theater, if you will : it ’s challenging and quiet and sensitive; it might make you sometimes go “Whuuuuut?” until you realize you’re not supposed to understand everything with your head – but certainly there’s lot to get here for the heart.

FROM JUICE.PH, JANUARY 5, 2015

P E R F O R M E R SP R O F I L E S

MESKY ABUNDO

Sky Abundo “wrote” a sweet haiku to fil l the space of his actor profile:

I love you baby,But it ain’t no lie babyBye bye bye bye bye

MY FRIENDMIGUEL ALMENDRAS

pain.. .swollen cheekscuts, brusiesinfected right legpeeling skinblood, tears

but it was worth it

ASST. KOTO PLAYERHAROLD SANTOS

Exploring non-western instruments and applying it in the Philippine performance/art context have always been my interest even before I entered the college of music. As soon as I entered, I started to learn the Japanese Koto; I have been studying the Japanese Koto for almost four years now. This is my first time to do live background music for a play since our education is more on traditional/

contemporary instrumental performances only. Working under Dr. Hiroko Nagai, an actual Japanese contemporary Koto performer, would be best for this contemporary play.

COMPOSER & KOTO PLAYERHIROKO NAGAI

The play talks about life. Music changes between three different scales, and moves towards hope in life.

P E R F O R M E R S P R O F I L E S

A R T I S T I C & P R O D U C T I O N T E A M

P R O F I L E S

DIRECTORRICARDO ABAD

At the Ryoanji Temple in Kyoto, I sat with many tourists, mostly Japanese, on a long wooden bench looking at and contemplating on a rock garden as large as a half-size Olympic swimming pool. A dozen or so rocks of different sizes stood on textured white sand, some huddled close together while others set far away from that cluster of stones. Some of my companions saw the rocks as mountains, others

as medieval castles on a vast field of snow. I thought of them as people: the rocks huddled together representing a collective, the lonely rock on the distant corner an individual who chose to be alone, maybe wanting the company of others but more in tune with being oneself, free as much as possible from the constraints inherent in group life. And I thought of two characters of My Friend Has Come as two lonely rocks sitting far away from each other on a bare field of sand, rock one trying to reach out to rock 2, and vice-versa, yet unable to do so, perhaps because they fear the grip of a collective life. The play is about two lonely souls in a bare Japanese garden, each one seeking to build a relationship, somehow achieving it, but ultimately remain afar from one another, frozen in space and time like the rocks in the garden of the Ryoanji Temple in Kyoto.

PLAYWRIGHTSUZUE TOSHIRO

Born in Osaka, Suzue Toshiro is one of the most acclaimed playwrights to have emerged from the Kansai region in Japan. He first became involved in theatre while a student at Kyoto University, and in 1993 founded the Hachi-ji Han theatre company in Kyoto, writing and directing company productions and acting in some. Now based in Tokyo, Suzue heads the Drama Program of the Toho Art College of Drama

and Music, and leads another theatre troupe called Office White Mountain. Suzue has written over 50 plays, among the key ones being Straight Fast Ball Divided into a Square (Cabin Drama Award, 1989), My Friend Has Come (OMS Drama Award, 1995), Spilled Fruit (Theater Cocoon Drama Award, 1995), and Firef lies (Kishida Kunio Drama Award, 1996). His plays have been translated into English, German, Russian, and Indonesian, and have been performed several times outside Japan. Suzue Toshiro visited the Philippines two years ago to watch the Philippine premiere of Firef lies at the Ateneo de Manila University. Soon after his visit, he became a proud father : his first born son has come. The Ikarus production of My Friend Has Come is the first ever formal staging of the play.Translator James Yaegashi is also an actor based in New York. The play, written in 1995, was translated in 2006.

Source material for this profi le include: http://www.performingarts. jp/e/data_art/theater/p-10457.html and http://suzuetoshir ou.blog .shinobi. jp/

A R T I S T I C & P R O D U C T I O N T E A M P R O F I L E S

PRODUCTION DESIGNER & GRAPHIC DESIGNERCLAUDINE DELFIN

PRODUCTION MANAGER & PROD. DESIGNERJAY CRISOSTOMO IV


STAGE MANAGERJULIA MOTOOMULL

ATENEO FA MARKETING REPRESENTATIVEROXANNE CUACOY

LIGHTS TECHNICIANRAP ABENIDO

LIGHTS TECHNICIANJETHRO NIBATEN

SOUND DESIGNERREAMUR DAVID

LIGHTING DESIGNERD CORTEZANO


KENDO CHOREOGRAPHERSMASAYOSHI CORPUZ & GERRARD KEVIN CAGATAN


P H O T O G A L L E R Y

M A N Y T H A N K S T O O U R P A R T N E R S

F O L L O W O U R J O U R N E Y O N L I N E

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rerun: suzue toshiro's my friend has come

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