Companies bring body horror and political statements to Berlin’s FIND festival of new international drama, where the Wooster Group is the “artist in focus.”
This summer Japan Society offers an unconventional presentation of psychiatrist-turned-director/playwright Kuro Tanino s The Dark Master. Inspired by an indie manga, this immersive and humorously dark experimental theater piece engages the audience with sights, sounds and smells.
Through Virtual Reality (VR) headsets, headphones, and live on-stage cooking, the piece positions each audience member in first person perspective as the play s protagonist, an unassuming patron of a Japanese diner. Performed by Tanino s experimental theater company Niwa Gekidan Penino, the story depicts the strange, symbiotic relationship that develops between the customer and the restaurant s owner-chef simply called the Master. Borrowing the dramaturgy of first-person video games, the audience experiences first-hand how the Master s all-consuming persona highjacks the identity of his victims in a novel production that collapses the border between reality and illusion.