Note from the editor: Jordan continues his series on stories about being a college theater major at Ball State University with this article. For some of his other work, click here or here!
Compared with the typical high school picks like Hamlet or Oklahoma!, college allows you to begin working on more thought-provoking and experimental shows. I’ve learned to accept the avant garde material and have loved learning about so many different shows and writers. However, I have never worked on a show quite like Shogo Ohta’s play, The Water Station.
It’s a play from Japan in the style of noh theater and what makes this show so unique, especially compared to other shows I have worked on, is that there is no dialogue! All of the storytelling is done through music and movement that is found in the script written in the form of a poem. Without the dialogue, actors have to find a way to portray characters through facial expressions and body language instead. The show also has a notably slow tempo, which does not just mean moving in slow motion. The actors have to concentrate on each individual movement, focusing on one action at a time. You almost have to train yourself to think one thought at a time in harmony with the reduced speed of your body.
Casting for this show was different than others at our school; we had several workshops where our director, Drew Vidal, worked with students on the fundamentals of the show. After workshops we pulled a list of people for callbacks where they did some of these movement exercises again before a final cast was put together. It helps on this show to have a director who is not only an actor, but also a movement coach.
Because this process is very difficult to ease into, our director had training sessions each Saturday where we did various movement exercises and physical conditioning. I, along with the other assistant director Hannah, also participated in one of the training sessions and I can tell you first-hand that this is not something you can master in one day. Even the leg muscles and concentration it takes just to sit down in slow tempo is hard. I applaud the actors who have worked so much these last two months on this show.
In The Water Station, a group of twenty people are traveling away from some sort of disaster. On their way, they run into a fountain where they each stop to rest and we see their own individual stories. What is very neat about this play is that much about the lives and pasts of these characters is not in the text, allowing the actors to have room to place their character into the world by creating their story. We had many interesting stories that were eventually incorporated into the show. For example, there is a scene with a married couple who has lost their child, yet still carries their possessions in a baby carriage that travels along with them. There is a woman whose only possession is a parasol that she carries with her, struggling to hold on to her past of high society and beauty as she travels on a treacherous road. The actors even brought in their own personal objects that are now all used in some way in the show. The actress who plays the old woman brought a pocket watch, which is now the watch of her husband that she listens to.
One of the most interesting characters is the man who lives on top of a giant pile of objects and trash that we have created in our set. One day was spent with the actors in the many prop storage units throughout our theater department where we found many interesting objects to bring into our show. I have never really been on a show where the actors actually took part in the design of their own set, which was a fun experience for them. It turned into a great episode of Storage Wars and, later on, Hoarders when the junk pile was finally constructed!
I have learned so many things from this show. Most importantly, everyone has their own story and no matter who you are, we can all come together, connecting with not only our own emotions, but by the human experience. I encourage everyone to check out The Water Station and other shows in the noh theatre world.
Photo credit: The Hindu