Five Days in March: even sex is boring to generation y

[img_assist|nid=655|title=Childish gestures, Five Days in March, photo: Thomas Bremond|desc=|link=none|align=right|width=384|height=256]Recently in theatre there has been a disturbing tendency of what I can only describe as “action-narration”, where characters describe the actions they’re doing while doing them. For example, if Fred has to walk into a room, open a cupboard and shove a cupcake in his ear he will narrate the action thusly: “I walk into the room, open a cupboard and shove a cupcake in my ear”. I have no idea why playwrights have been adopting this technique unless they’re trying to assert some sort of control over actors and directors. I also have no idea why companies produce work that features this device as it’s really very annoying. Mind you, I do narrate my own life as I live it: “It’s late at night, I sit at my laptop, trying to finish my PuSh review. The twin sisters are calling to me from the bedroom, wondering where I am, tempting me with promises….”*

Although I’m loath to suggest this (in part because I don’t want to justify this literary wankiness) perhaps playwrights feel “action-narration” evokes a sense of disconnect between the character and their actions. *Five Days in March* by Toshiki Okada, produced by "chelfitsch Theatre Company":http://www.chelfitsch.net/en/ (and part of the ongoing "PuSh Festival":http://pushfestival.ca/index.php?mpage=home) is also about disconnection. The seven performers do not narrate their actions – indeed there is no real action in the production – but rather tell elliptical stories, in very casual, direct to the audience address, about a series of events that took place over five days in March 2003. The central story is about a couple who meet randomly at a “post-rock show”, hook up and then check into the capsule of a nearby love hotel for five days of frantic love-making.

A play about five days of fucking sounds delightful but alas there is no fucking on stage. Clearly this is part of the central conceit of the piece (which you could say even stretches out to the promotional material that lures in unsuspecting reviewers): what should be an erotically charged event is drained of passion, it becomes nothing but a story flatly told by Generation Y slackers (the term used by the company). There is something nihilistic about all this. A previous generation (including my own beloved “X”) would likely have shown some sort of vigorous, sweaty action probably pushing the envelope in an effort to show how unshockable we’ve all become (and, in turn, somehow commenting on how bored we are by such activity). By having flat narration, Okada weirdly goes even further and there is something admirable about the company’s dedication to go after something so lacking in active engagement – for it flirts with boredom (I shouldn’t be coy, Five Days in March is boring – at least to a non-Japanese speaking audience).

I say there is no action but that’s not quite true. All the characters fidget and repeat physical gestures such as rubbing their legs or pulling on their crotch. These gestures are baffling although there is a sort of minimalist beauty to them. What is their purpose? I’m not completely sure. I tried to puzzle out Five Days in March with a couple of people after the show. I suggested that the actions reminded me of the way children fidget when they tell you a story. The eyes of one of the people I was talking to lit up and she agreed but pointed out that the topic of their story was very adult. It was as if the piece was saying something about the infantile nature of Generation Y.

And that’s about the best I can come up with after several hours of reflection. There is another layer to the piece as the five days coincide with the period of time just prior to the invasion of Iraq. One of the stories involves a couple of the young people going on an anti-war march that ends at the US embassy. Yet there is no active engagement in the purpose of the march or the wider implications of the war itself. They are just random background events, things that just happen to be going on. The play is also very much about a specific neighbourhood in Tokyo. This is perhaps one of the most successfully realized elements of the piece as the banal nature of everyday life, lining up at the ATM, catching subway trains is narrated in detail. I longed to know more about this neighbourhood, which must be where the Y generation congregate.

The reason I equivocated slightly in calling Five Days in March boring in part has to do with the fact that it was performed in Japanese with English surtitles. This is not the first time I’ve seen a foreign language play and I’ve never found surtitles a problem before and yet for this production I found them a real block. The subtle gesture work demanded your attention yet your eyes had to flit back up to the titles. Meanwhile, the titles themselves relayed the – intended – banal, emotion-drained, elliptical narratives that just weren’t interesting to read. I can’t help but feel that if I had been able to watch these quiet, fully-committed performers without interruption, I would have got far more. Despite its purpose to illustrate disconnection, I suspect I should have been more drawn into the piece than I was.

But still, I imagine even in Japanese this piece is hard work. I’ve always imagined that the pornographic excesses on the internet (or even on stage) will come to an end not by dictates from governments but rather from a desensitised general public simply turning away. We will wilfully seek out the bland and the comfortable as an alternative to the visceral. Maybe that’s part of the message of this piece. Still, I can only conclude that Five Days in March is better as a thought-exercise for a reviewer than as an actual experience for an English-speaking audience member.

*Of course, that’s not strictly true. I finished the review in the morning.

_Five Days in March; written and directed by Toshiki Okada. A chelfitsch Theatre Company production. Part of the PuSh Festival. At Performance Works. Continues until January 24. For more information slack "here":http://pushfestival.ca/index.php?mpage=shows&spage=main&id=71#show slacker._