Stomu Yamashta (Japón,1973) - 03 - What A Way To Live In Modern Times

The Red Buddha Theatre was formed in Japan in 1971, after working there for some months they were brought to Europe for Summer '72 by Stomu Yamash'ta, the company's producer, director, composer; in July and August they were the sensation of the Avignon Festival. After a brief but successful visit to London's I.C.A. in August they returned to France to take up residency at the Carre Thorigny, a brand new theatre in Paris' oldest district, Marais. Their stay was eventually extended to January 1973 when the Company had to leave to commence a month at the Roundhouse in London. They play perpetually to packed houses and critical acclaim seems quite normal . . .

Stomu Yamash'ta is known to us as a virtuoso percussionist, a mime and musician in whose body music seems to flame, whose mind cries through the medium of his instruments: someone, as Henze put it, who makes visible the music of our time. Now he appears in a new role, as animator\author\composer directing the Red Buddha Theatre: 35 young Japanese actors, dancers and musicians, offering an uncommonly exhilarating, attractive, fascinating theatrepiece, "The Man from the East".

Though none of the performers can have been born on August 6, 1945, they are of the generation who still live in its shadow:rejecting the ethos of a society which madethat possible, but embracing things like love, and laughter, and the beauty of nature. Also the beauty of art. There is nothing sloppy about the show which is enacted by disciplined bodies, and played by musicians of fine tempered technique. Stomu draws freely from many sources: kabuki, traditional Japanese music, pop. The Edge, the Western group with whom he has often worked, also take part in this.

Though there is horror in the piece, there is and the gaiety of which marks the work of Bread and Puppets, but less despair easy vitality. They make one feel that there is hope for the world when young people can be so open; can shake off their fathers' guilt by having no part in their meaner ways of thinking; when they can so merrily and unbitterly mock the life of crowded subways, supermarkets, and offices where the telephone rings nonstop. Illusion perhaps, but a good, happy illusion a dream which more and more young people are endeavouring to live, and a good dream for the middleaged, caught in the horrid life, to enjoy whenever they can. A dream which Stomu and his accomplished ensemble communicate with elegant exhuberance.

Andrew Porter Financial Times 15 August 1972