AMEYA Norimizu's Theatrical Activities in the 1980s

Abstract

AMEYA Norimizu is a changing artist. In the 1980s, he was a man of the theater: a dramatist, a director, a stage and sound designer, and an actor. In the 90s, he was an artist of the postmodern art. Since 1999, he has been an owner of a shop of rare animals. Ameya says that those activities he has been doing, including dealing with rare animals, are all for what he thinks is theatre.

He wants to show the reality of a living body by means of theatre and technology. For example, in Skin#2 Buffalo Mix (1989), Ameya and his theatre group “M.M.M” made an exciting collaboration of living actors with a machine, which was like the “machine” of SRL of Mark Pauline. It was, in a sense, a theatre performance of Japanese cyber-punk. He was interested in the contemporary noise music and liked to use it in his theatre performances.

But Ameya's activities are not completely different from Japanese theatre before him. He took some suggestions for his sound effect from KARA Jyuro's Jyokyo Gekijo. In Ameya's theatre Kara's sound effect was mixed with noise music, and it produced a unique effect of Ameya's own.