The duo formed by Kotomi Nishiwaki and Miquel Casaponsa embark on a new adventure, bringing to the stage their translation of a series of tanka poems written fifty years ago by Takahide Nishiwaki, Kotomi’s grandfather, during his travels around Japan. Tanka is a traditional form of Japanese poetry based on five-line verses that evoke brief impressions and timeless reflections that speak of the fleeting nature of human existence and our emotional connection with nature. In fact, haiku came about as a parody of this exaggerated sentimentality which, in turn, underscores the extreme intimacy of tanka.

Yet words always conceal more than they say. In Rokatei (La cabana de les sis cançons), Park Keito takes us on an allegorical journey through the landscapes described by Kotomi’s grandfather, whose poems are like undeveloped photographs. Travelling back in time to imagine the past also implies, to a certain extent, taking a leap forward and asking what certain landscapes looked like or how particular emotions were perceived fifty years ago. And this brings us back to the question of how we will see or experience these things in the future. Will we still be using the same words? Will they carry the same meanings as they do today? What new ways of imagining will we need to invent to continue crossing the bridge between reality and fiction?

These questions guide this project, which has a residency at this year’s TNT and aims to translate the metric and ambiguity of Japanese poems into sound, body, objects and space, searching for utopian bridges and interpretative keys to project the open-ended nature of tanka onto a piece of theatre that encourages us to slow down and contemplate at a more leisurely pace than we are used to. Ultimately, the linear concept of time is Western fiction that has little to do with the cyclical temporality of Japanese culture, which is so full of spirits that we are reminded that despite advancing from prehistoric caves to DJs, nothing has really changed. In other words, the poem doesn’t change. We do. And it is in our pulsating impermanence that we must seek the mystery.