Daily report of my visit with O-Getsu Ryu from January 7 - 23 in 2011.

First let me introduce myself: Helene Meyer, director and teacher at the Academy of Theatre ArtEZ in The Netherlands. I was artistic leader of theatregroup Coyote in which professional and amateur artists worked together. The group exsisited from 1989 till 2004. Our theatrical work was focused on combining and integrating physical acting and the moving principles of Aikido. Or goal was to explore and develop our own style of acting and staging a performance. We produced different productions. Classic repertoire like Macbeth of Shakespeare and modern plays like States of Shock of Sam Shepard. We also made plays by ourselves based on improvisation like Chrema Chremata which tells the story of Oidipous. In our theatrical different disciplines like music, video and dance were integrated. In these performances I worked closely together with a choreographer, a video artist and musicians.

In 2004 I saw in Holland the performance of Sakuya and was very impressed by the way the story was staged. And very excited about the artistic work in combining the cultural traditions of Yamato and sword dance with the modern techniques of staging a theatreproduction. There were many parallels in the artistic work of O-Getsu Ryu and my own theatregroup Coyote. I went the next day again to see their last performance in Holland.

Some years have passed and in the meanwhile Coyote stopped as a theatregroup. As a director I miss the artistic and creative work. Out of this desire the plan was made to go to Tokyo and visit O-Getsu Ryu to follow their artistic and creative working process in making a new theatre production. The idea came up two years ago and due to their and my schedule it finally happened: I am Tokyo and can join the rehearsals of the new production which will be performed in April 2011!

I can stay for 3 weeks and observe the period in which approximately 40 minutes of new the production will be performed for the opening ceremony for the new building of the Dept. of Fine Arts of the Nihon University on January 23th. So I can see a part of the process from the start till the stage.

Today I observed the first rehearsal in the Dept. of Fine Arts. Choreography of sword dance was trained and in the second part a fight was rehearsed. The group of actors consists of old and new members and the level in experience and skill is different. I was impressed by the dedicated attitude of all the actors.

The training started with the training of  the technique and later on the dynamics. First Fumio Matsuki instructs the well trained actors. Later they coach the new members. In training the fight Fumio instructs on the focus and the timing of the movements by which the fight gains a lot of vitality. It makes me very interested how the ensemble incorporates the clear spirit and strong appearance at the stage. It will be revealed.......