地点　CHITEN

This production of No Light is a new, multilingual staging of one of Chiten’s most well-known and critically acclaimed performances. Over many years, Chiten has developed a uniquely musical and material methodology for speaking onstage. The 2012 and 2014 performances of No Light drew on this technique to present a melding of rich language and vivid imagery that grew increasingly powerful over the course of the performance, depicting the border between the living and the dead, humanity being swept up by technology, and the chaos Japanese people experienced in the immediate aftermath of the Great East Japan Earthquake. In these performances of No Light, the resonance between language and imagery worked in tandem with the truly spectacular scale of the theatre space to leave audiences in awe.

After Chiten’s first encounter with Jelinek in No Light, they continued to create theatrical adaptations of her work with performances of Sports Play (2016) and Don’t Worry About It (2017, originally titled Macht Nichts). Next, Chiten premiered their first performance of Jelinek in five years in the summer of 2021 by staging Noise. Vision Obscured! (2021, originally titled Lärm. Blindes Sehen. Blinde sehen!), in Hamburg, Germany. References to Greek mythology are a reoccurring element in Jelinek’s work, and this piece is no exception, featuring an appearance by the goddess Circe, who transforms humans into swine. Drawing key themes from Heidegger’s Being and Time, this new work by Jelinek employs humor and irony to portray a sense of unease with where pandemic era conspiracy theories and media sensationalism seem to be leading us all.