Satellite Call Theater

Show highlights (Planning and Direction by Kyoko Takenaka)

The Theater Space as an Infrastructure for Fiction

Satellite Call Theater is a theater that acts as a device for receiving voices that have gone unheard. The theater is not a “box” for watching polished performances, but an infrastructure of fiction where anybody can temporarily take on a role and build a relationship with the Other. Perhaps this fictional framework itself allows people to reenact and reimagine their realities.

At the Dionysia Festival in Ancient Greece, thoughts and feelings that could not be spoken normally were allowed public declaration in the form of theater. Even those whose voices could not directly affect politics or society could say whatever they want under the guise of “lines” (fiction); it is said that this very mechanism was the beginning of theater.

With fiction as our “collateral” or excuse, we let slip emotions that otherwise could not have been spoken. By having the theater as a place to receive stories that have nowhere to go, I hope that Tokyo will be reborn from a “smart city” into a “caring city.” *

*An urban paradigm where society is centered around care, valuing the support that people give each other. This is a new city model that sheds light on the care work that is often invisible, and supports the dignity of all people and their right to a livable city.

Casting a Light on the Frontlines: The Unique Rules and Creativity of Care at “Home”

This production recounts stories about care in the home. I’ve felt that care work at home, such as raising children or providing caretaking, is a practice that is so specialized and astonishingly creative. Since then, I’ve been interested in creating a piece with such people and have held a nationwide open call. 

We call the twelve speakers who participate in the project “Home Careists.” I chose this name to reexamine the expertise and importance of people who take on care work inside the home, and to show that this work should be respected within society.

Unlike institutionalized care, there are unique workarounds and choices that are born out of each home, each person, and each relationship. Here, we find embodied forms of knowledge that can only be gained on-site, and of imagination that comes from responding and adapting to various situations—all things that no manual can teach. On the other hand, the reality is that care at home is socially taken for granted, and it rarely receives recognition or is perceived as special. What’s more, even the Careists themselves have accepted this as natural, as a matter of fact. Through listening to and speaking of its complexity and creativity, this project attempts to shed light on this quiet work, and to open it up to society.

Dialogue and Collaboration as a Redefinition of Creation

This project is not solely “created” by a director. While cultivating dialogue and new relationships, twelve Home Careists and five Narrative Partners have built up this piece together. A Narrative Partner does not “extract” a story out of the speaker, but simply remains by their side through their worries or wavering. With this collaboration, the Careists may have had realizations they would not have had alone, or encountered sides of themselves that were previously unknown. This is a time to recognize that you, your existence, is not a smooth sphere, but a multifaceted polyhedron. Perhaps this work itself has been a form of care for the Careists. More than anything, I prioritized opening up room for the participants’ realities to softly shift, with the creation as a form of “collateral.” Beyond receiving recognition for the result, it is much more important for us that everyone involved in the project be glad that they participated in this creation. What finally emerges is not a finished deliverable, but a form of art where the creation itself is developed in tandem with the act of “caring/being cared for”—an accumulation, perhaps, of the traces left by interacting with somebody, listening to them, and trying to imagine what it’s like in their shoes.