Paradise Busshozan 2016

Busshozan was once a flourishing town near a temple that was constructed by the Matsudaira family in the Edo era. For this project, we will tour the town and conduct performance art while strolling about the areas that are the sources of personal memories and stories of the region. Paradise Busshozan is a series of performing arts walk consisted of stories and memories relating to the town. As the third creation since 2014, it has been projected in collaboration with Busshozan Town Planning Room, a voluntary group encouraging the revitalization of the town. There are various spatial interventions e.g. performers, music and lighting as stage effect set in the town as a theater. Audiences divide into three groups led by performers to explore the townscape, and realize the Busshozan town through narrative polyphony: storytelling from various perspectives by different individuals.

As itʼs created through artist-in-residence and workshops with locals, performers are all ordinary people who live, work, or were born in Busshozan. In the performance they are telling the audience their personal experiences in places where they actually live and use. This theatrical experimentation aims not only to create the performance in the townscape but to give us an alternative perspective towards the town by pushing boundaries of reality and fiction. When the stories and their unconscious minds have been performed and overlapped with actual townscape and audiences’ imagination, another scenery of Busshozan reveals itself.

This artwork was created by an artist collective Pepin Structural Designs and he took part of this project as a member from research through creation – see details on pepin.jp