INTERVIEW: After 20 years, Basil Twist brings back ‘Dogugaeshi’ to Japan Society
Photo: Dogugaeshi utilizes an elaborate network of screens to tell its story. Photo courtesy of Richard Termine / Provided by Seven 17 PR with permission.
When Basil Twist created the puppetry show Dogugaeshi more than 20 years ago, he struck a nerve with audience members. Now he’s ready to bring the theatrical piece to a whole new crowd at New York City’s Japan Society, where the show runs tonight, Sept. 11, through Thursday, Sept. 19. Tickets are currently sold out for the entire run.
Twist’s creation, which he also directs and performs in, utilizes a puppetry technique involving elaborate and beautiful artistic screens. This art form originates from the Awa region of Japan but has faded from stages throughout time. In fact, performing Dogugaeshi is an attempt to preserve the puppetry practice in order for the art form to live on.
“Honestly, it’s pretty much exactly the same,” Twist said in a recent interview about the show 20 years ago vs. today. “The show is really about the set, and the set is this intricate layer of screens. And it’s the same screens as it was before. There have been new performers in it, but three of the performers — myself; Yumiko Tanaka, the master shamisen player who is playing in the evenings; and then Jesse Scott, one of the puppeteers — we are three of the originals from 20 years ago.”
Twist, who is a third-generation puppeteer, said that the screens are not complicated. They are essentially sliding paper doors that move left and right, and some of them turn around at different angles. What the performers struggle with during the show is the volume of screens; there are many of these artistic creations to maneuver.
“It is a physical production because 20 years later doing it I notice how challenging it is,” he said. “I have to crawl around on my knees underneath the set for the whole show. So the screens themselves are simple, but the volume of it and the way that you have to choreograph and move from one screen to another, that’s what’s complicated.”
How Twist found out about this art form is a story unto itself. In fact, his journey is part of the narrative of the entire show.
“The art form was specific to one small island, so even when it was flourishing, it was really only known in that region of the island of Awaji,” he said. “I took this show to Japan actually years ago in 2007, and people seeing the show, no one had seen anything like it. But it’s familiar imagery, but no one had seen anything like it among modern-day Japanese people.”
In fact, Twist couldn’t find any theater companies still performing this type of puppetry. He said that the art form had faded away as the years progressed, but he did find a lot of screens that were left over from its heyday.
“It once was very thriving there, and it is no longer,” said Twist, who also created Symphonie Fantastique. “So it is a very rare, fragile thing. I’m not a scholar. My intention was not to re-create it. I’m just an appreciator as an artist and presenting my interpretation and appreciation of it, but I know when we brought it to Japan, people saw it and people even in the region saw it. And it may have sparked some renewed interest in the form, so I’m grateful for that. I’m proud of that.”
The impetus for this theatrical journey actually didn’t begin in Japan; the journey began earlier in France. More than two decades ago Twist was attending a puppet festival in France, and he visited an exhibition on Japanese puppetry. There was a film playing in the exhibition that showcased this unique Dogugaeshi technique.
“And I was intrigued by it,” he said. “When I was invited to create something for the Japan Society … I said, ‘Well, here’s what I want to do with it. I want to find out what those screens were that I saw on that black-and-white film that I saw in France.’ And so in speaking with different knowledgeable people, they guided me. ‘Here’s who you should talk to,’ but I didn’t discover it in Japan. I discovered it in France, and I went to Japan specifically to find out more, and when I got there, I found that there was not much going on because the tradition had withered away so much.”
Dogugaeshi, which is part of Japan Society’s Ningyo! A Parade of Puppetry series, begins with a reenactment of the film that Twist first viewed in that French exhibition. Then the show travels to Japan, which also mirrors Twist’s own journey to Japan, where he found so many old screens from past puppetry performances.
“One of the museums I visited, I recognized the screens that they had in the museum,” said Twist, who has worked in film and opera. “They were the ones from the film. They were the same ones from the film. I could tell because I had studied the film. I had recognized the patterns. It was this amazing kind of ah-ha Sherlock Holmes moment where I found the actual screens that had inspired me through this old black-and-white film. That was such an amazing thing for me.”
Twist added: “When I discovered those screens … there was this one puppet of a white nine-tailed fox, and it was so beautiful this puppet. I wasn’t looking for that puppet. It showed up when I found those screens. It was sort of sitting there like it was sitting there waiting for me because it was so extraordinary for me to find those same screens, and then there was this fox puppet. I loved that moment in my journey so much I wanted the fox to be in the story, so I made my own fox puppet, which is based on a specific traditional Japanese story of its own, which is the tale of the nine-tailed fox. But it’s more about that puppet appeared for me, and I wanted that same white nine-tailed object in my show. So I made one of my own, and that’s kind of the guide that leads us through this journey. And the journey culminates in all the screens assembling and performing the Dogugaeshi, but it’s all really based on, in a way, my personal experience about my experience in Japan and of traditions that belong to another culture.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Dogugaeshi, created, directed and performed by Basil Twist, continues through Thursday, Sept. 19, at Japan Society in New York City. Click here for more information and tickets.
