By Madeline Baker, Times Chronicle
For fine arts lovers who struggle to choose between live classical music, theatre, dance, and visual art when deciding how to spend their night out, Oliver’s Venables Theatre may have just the ticket on March 21: Hiromoto Ida’s ‘Birthday Present For Myself,’ an eclectic mash-up of performance and storytelling styles with a universal theme.
The Nelson-based performer is a contemporary dancer, choreographer and actor, and he weaves all of those skills into ‘Birthday Present For Myself,’ which tells the story of an old man (Hiromoto Ida) visiting with the spirit of his late wife (played by Lindsay Clague) as he prepares to meet his own mortality.
The old man begins the show in a hospital bed with his consciousness slipping in and out, and as Ida explains: “Everybody wants to die in their own home, not the hospital, right? So his imagination starts to take him back to his old home, and he also had a wife that passed away four years ago, so suddenly his wife and his home and everything is there, so he tries to have his own birthday party.”
The “birthday” referred to in the show’s title has a very different meaning than the usual, though. Ida was inspired by the words, which he borrowed from the title of a piece by Russian composer Pavel Karmanov, to consider the differences between birthday parties and funerals and found the idea relevant to his then-developing performance piece.
Ida dances wearing the distinctive style of mask that typifies Japanese Noh theatre.
“On your birthday,” Ida says, “your mama might ask, “What do you want to do, Honey?” Then you say, “I wanna have a cake, I want to pin the tail on the donkey, I want to go to the swimming pool,” you know. But nobody asked, “how about your funeral? What do you want to have at your funeral?”
In his half-conscious state, the old man dreams up a gift to himself – a sunny spring day in a garden with pleasant music all around him and his late wife at his side – and this idyllic final day of life acts as a celebration of his birth into a new state of being.
Ida performs from behind a Kagekiyo Noh mask which is a staple of Japan’s traditional Noh style of theatre, in which actors wear masks carved from a single piece of wood. The masks are used to denote everything from their character’s age, gender, and social rank, to their species or even divinity.
When combined with the body language expressed in the actor’s movements, these masks, of which there are 60 different types and hundreds of variations within those categories, are intended to engage the audience’s imagination by creating an impression of a character to which they can add details.
The Kagekiyo mask worn by Ida during his performance represents an elderly man who has fallen from greatness into exile, disability and poverty after a great military loss, known as a “deranged” character type. With that type set, the old man can be anyone to any audience member while still feeling fleshed out and whole.
Ida began his theatre training in Tokyo, then took up contemporary dance when he moved to Vancouver in the 1980s and even branched into screen acting with the film Tokyo Cowboy. More recently, he played the role of Japanese Prime Minister Hideki Tojo in Roland Emmerich’s 2019 WWII film, Midway.
This diversity of experience and training shows in every aspect of the development of Birthday Present For Myself, which also features writings by Japanese contemporary playwright Shogo Ota and an original score written by Karmanov and performed live onstage by Nicola Everton on clarinet, Sue Gould on piano, Jeff Faragher on cello, and Martine denBok on violin and viola.
While the many pieces that make up the whole of Ida’s performance may be unfamiliar to audience members, Ida hopes to guide them through the journey in such a way that none of those parts will feel alienating or beyond their comprehension.
“Some artists, you know what? They’re kind of snobby,” Ida admitted with a laugh. “They say ‘Well, look at this thing I made, it’s really confusing and complicated but if you don’t understand, well, that’s your problem.’”
“I don’t want to make anything too weird, but I don’t want to make a boring, typical story, so I’m gonna grab [the audience] and take them with me.”
Ida is a lively and imaginative storyteller who has been able to bring together many separate, seemingly disparate passions to tell a story that he calls, like the old man’s gift to himself, a gift that he offers to everyone who will come along with him.
‘Birthday Present For Myself’ begins at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, March 21. Tickets are $30 for adults and $20 for people under 19 years of age, and can be purchased online at venablestheatre.ca.
