The Tokyo Festival World Competition 2019 was held at the Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre from Oct. 29 till Nov. 4 during the Tokyo Festival 2019, and the Award for Outstanding Show and other awards were given at the award ceremony on Nov. 4. 

Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike participated in the award ceremony and congratulated the award recipients.

The awards and the reasons for the awards are as follows:

<Reasons for the award>

Dai Chenlian invites us to a Mythic world, both primitive and Asian. He demonstrates a new possibility in the world of performing arts, which currently weighs heavily towards  logocentric Western theatre.  

Through what perhaps could be understood as “movies before film” – derived from Asian sentiments and a non-linear sensory world – the artist presents us with a new understanding of time within the traditional Eastern performing arts.

The work seems to lead us towards the coming artistic horizons of 2030, where the real and fictional world, and the magical lights and shadows that resemble our reality, merge with each other.

‘Big Nothing’ is a particularly poetic and Asian fantasy, that asks us the fundamental questions of human nature – Who are we, where are we standing, and where are we headed – in a state where time crosses between the past and the present, the future and the departed. (Translated by Park Daewon)

Yang Jung-ung (Artists’ Jury)

There are several compelling reasons to choose The Big Nothing as “Outstanding Show” in the Tokyo Festival World Competition. First of all, the piece stands out as exceptional because while the default frame for all the other performances was an overly familiar, already exhausted, western theatrical normative form. The Big Nothing is the only exception.

Secondly, using what appeared on the surface to be merely an expression of Asian sentimentality, The Big Nothing performatively belies this superficiality in both its form and substance. Indeed, the unfolding of the performance reveals the most fundamental impulse for art – the deep existential struggle to realize one’s humanness through attempts to make sense out of a sometimes senseless world, and render one’s participation that world meaningful through acts of creation. In doing so, the performance enacted and illuminated a powerful truth often forgotten in the egocentric world of big artistic personalities. This truth is that it is art that creates and constitutes the human, rather than the other way around.

 The Big Nothing was a solo performance. We meet one man in his solitary world, entangled in myriad quotidian struggles as he tries to illuminate the fragments of human memories, ancestors, and traces of the body that have now nearly faded away into shadow. We meet a man searching for his grandmother, for his humanity, for community, for language, and for direction in life – the very reason for this theatre competition.

Through the use of time, space, ceremony, and performative fragmentation, The Big Nothing invites us to activate our imagination. The work inducts the audience into the performance as co-creator of the work. In doing so, it transcends its cultural specificity and offers something greater. The Big Nothing has no country and no order – just the crossroads that it opens up for us, challenging us to participate in deciding where to go. 

Lemi Ponifasio (Artists’ Jury)

<Reason for the Award>

In the Outstanding Performer category, the jury has decided to grant the entire cast from the Chilean company Bonobo this award for their ensemble performance “Tú Amarás (You Shall Love).” The convincing strength of their performance generated in the theatre is a timely evocation of the violence and the division unfolding in the world today, and especially in their homeland. Their artistry, commitment, and teamwork on stage offer hope for these times. 

Lemi Ponifasio (Artists’ Jury)

<Reason for the Award>

The jury was immensely impressed with the compelling sound design of Bob Scott, which welded the extraordinary vocals of the various performers of The Howling Girls, together with the unusual instrumentation, and an electronic soundscape, to create a rich and moving atmosphere and audio narrative.

Brett Bailey (Artists’ Jury)

<Reason for the Award>

The critics’ jury was faced with the difficult problem of awarding only one prize, whereas the artists’ jury had the luxury of awarding three prizes. Yet when the six members of the Japanese-speaking critics’ jury met early on, we all thought we’d “somehow” (nantonaku) reach a consensus on the work that we chose for the critics’ jury award. In fact, we did not reach a consensus and had to vote. Our choice was a little like the “first past the post” style of elections, in which, in a multi-party system, a party that wins only a minority of the popular vote may win a majority government. This is the system that exists, for example, in Japan or Canada. The final result of our vote, Tú Amarás from Chile, was a surprise to most if not all of us, but in reviewing the criteria for awarding the prize, we especially focused on the work and company that best represented or addressed: 1) challenging issues that we as a human species face today, and will continue to face in the coming decade; and 2) shōraisei—promise of innovative, challenging work in the future. While recognizing that all the artists and their work showed promise and each in their own way addressed problems that human beings currently face and will continue to face in the future, in weighing these criteria, four out of six of the jurors picked Tú Amarás as the competition’s best work and Bonobo as the company that showed the greatest promise for creating superlative work in the future. Tú Amarás presented issues—the universal human capacity for discrimination and violence—with deep insight but, at the same time, with great wit and humour. Both text and presentation (acting, direction, etc.) were excellent. This was a decision that we all could agree on.

Cody Poulton (Japanese Speaking Critics’ Jury)