June 13 - An Uneasy Imbalance

(This post will be modified and descriptions of photos added when I have some time. I don’t want to get too far away to record initial responses.)

June 13 was our first full day on campus in classes. We went to two workshops and one lecture on Mt. Fuji / Matsumoto Castle. The workshops were led by Technos Faculty and translated by Technos students. We had been given the opportunity to rank choices and then were placed into workshops by the students. My first workshop was one that none of us remembered as an option - Sports.

In many ways, this experience felt familiar and I could imagine myself creating something similar for a theatre workshop. We started in pairs with someone from the other school playing a game where you spin a fling object towards each other. Let’s just say that with RP this did not go well for either me or my partner. They were incredibly patient and gracious, for which I was grateful. After this activity, we spent a lot of time running under a jump rope while holding hands with people (increasingly large groups). I initially opted out of this experience because folks were jumping rope and I did not want to be tripped by the rope that I could not see. I stood with a small cluster of non-Technos folks who had various - usually health-based - reasons not to feel comfortable participating. After the first round, however, my flying partner came and pulled me into the game. It wound up being safe and fine, but the activity made me very aware of a tension that I often experience in my own work in theatre and education back in the states - how do you build community while simultaneously leaving space for people to navigate in a way that honors who they are as individuals.

I felt this tension strongly throughout the day, recognizing that I was opting out within the confines of a program in which we have been repeatedly reminded that in Japan it is rude to say no, and that we should try to engage in everything as it is presented to us. I do not want to disrespect my incredibly gracious hosts. I also believe in the value of knowing my own limitations in environments in which no space is created for us to collaborate to create ground rules that allow us all to bring our best selves to the table.

This remains an uneasy tension for me. More on that for the next post.

For now, here are some photos from the top of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building, where many of us went following the day’s activities to get a sense of the scale of Tokyo. The vastness of the city is overwhelming. If you look closely in some of them, you can see Mt. Fuji in the background.