#company guide
Company Guide intervews:
Suga Kenta
Shiota Kouhei
Scans via @engekihaikyuuhere.
I always thought that Ennoshita was a very difficult role. It’s not as if there’s anywhere he particularly excels or outstrips the others on the team, but it’s also not as if he’s a total failure. Furthermore, for shoen, in terms of the story he only had a limited number of appearances in the source material, and he was still an unknown quantity. Such a role places a heavy burden on the actor. If you have a role whose portrayal and lines are closely tied to the main story, then it’s easier to generate emotion from your acting, and it’s easy to get the audience to take that in. Plus, this is obvious, but in a manga, when characters don’t appear [in a panel], they don’t appear. But on stage, it’s plainly “if they exist, they’re there.” – so even if the character is in the background, the actor has to constantly figure out the point of that character’s presence. This was the first time I’d played that type of role and… I started from the understanding that playing a character like Ennoshita who supported everyone around him would be valuable material, a challenge, for me.
When rehearsal started, it felt like the audition just kept going. (laughter) That was because I thought, “If this series continues, and I don’t do a good job of establishing a role for Ennoshita, they might not keep the character in the show.” He may be an integral part of Haikyuu!!, but in the process of adapting something for the stage abridgements might occur depending on the circumstances… In reality, there are productions where characters are cut from the stage adaptation depending on how it’s being made, looking at things objectively. So first, in shoen, in that single work, I tried to play Ennoshita in such a way that he was an indispensable piece of what made the play engaging, to have the audience think, “Now this is Karasuno, with Ennoshita and everything.” …Mmhm, I really struggled with that.
To be honest, at the beginning of shoen when Worry-san first said, “We’re all part of the Haikyuu theater troupe,” it didn’t really click for me. But when we actually finished creating the first work together, I got it, overwhelmingly. The whole process of creation was an experience that broke down the fences between us as young actors. Throwing ourselves with fervor into the creation of a single work. All of our individual strengths were necessary for that, and as we portrayed [the story] together, in a variety of ways aside from the main roles, we all became one whole – As a result, we were able to break through fixed ideas about “this is what theater is” or “this is what 2.5D is” and try for a type of entertainment unique to our generation. The fact that we got so far as to have our work cited as an example of a new genre of modern theater gave us all confidence. Furthermore, it’s because we were entrusted with so much that we understand and trust each other. I feel like the more responsibility we had, the more our mental strength to think, “We can make this” was forged.
The show I would recommend is… all of them. (laughter) Shoenandsaien specialized in the drama of Karasuno coming together, and “Karasuno, Revival!” had a show upgrade, getting more colorful as the participating schools increased… And for each work, the concept is different, and each ends up the best expression of Haikyuu stage to portray that particular story at that time. So I want people to watch and contrast each work and experience the whole production in its entirety.
The Haikyuu theater troupe is a special place, where we’re tested as actors and as creators. There are many things we couldn’t do anywhere else! Until the first curtain goes hope, we’re really worried, and every time the stage itself is like a match… I think that’s great, too. Karasuno’s sense of unity is strong. Our degree of trust grows by leaps and bounds. The more we accept each other, we say what we want to say, we clash, we don’t back down… (laughter) After this… I want to stay here as Ennoshita for as long as these productions continue. I’ll do my best.
Scans via @engekihaikyuuhere.
The truth is… I intially auditioned for a different role. Even so, I always thought, “Wow, I’m like Tanaka. He reminds me of when I was in high school.” But in the end, I’m truly glad I ended up playing Tanaka. Generally speaking he’s all over with happy emotions so it’s fun through and through to do! He’s not just loud (laughs), as the moodmaker he can be sensitive and caring, and even if he has to say something harsh and blunt he’ll end with a big smile and leave the person he’s talking to with a positive impression. In the everyday scenes Tanaka’s the first one to come out saying “Good morning~”, so he’s positioned to grasp the point of the scene. I take care not to go overboard. I play him thinking first and foremost of his relationships with everyone else.
While Haikyuu stage follows in the steps of the original manga, with each production the way we formulate the play itself deepens. So for me, in addition to dramatizing the manga there’s a lot of things I try out in terms of pure performance. I think it’s thanks to this production that I’ve learned how to act with precision and restraint. Everyone in the company is truly an amazing performer, so there’s a lot to steal from them, and every day of rehearsal is a learning experience. In terms of rhythm work and such, I don’t think there are many performances that have as many opportunities as this one… Usually we have about 300~400. But the atmosphere is very free and open. Often if we in the cast express something we want to do, we then shift in that direction. The creators are very flexible. In addition to listening to us, they’ll provide sound judgements. On the other hand, actors who don’t say anything can’t do anything… It’s certainly a little different from other shows. I think I’ve been forced to grow massively as an actor. Well, Karasuno is particularly self-assertive (laughs), and I’m proud that we all have a relationship where we can argue back and forth regardless of age.
The appeal of Haikyuu stage is… decidedly, “full strength”. Because the staff and the cast and the audience all go at full strength, the love gets stronger, and we can seriously get intense. All we want is the satisfaction of doing our utmost, and the audience’s reaction to that is incredible! Our ideal is “performance that isn’t seen as performance”. No matter how flashy something looks, if the acting isn’t there, you think “what are they trying to show me?”, so that balance has to be fine-tuned. If you let up even a little, it will cheapen, in a second. And then, I know there’s such a thing as audience etiquette, but… changing that up a little is one of our projects. Applauding at the moment you’re the most excited, even calling out “Do your best!” if you want, that’s wonderful. I think it’s really fun to share that feeling of “I couldn’t help saying something” “But that’s good too!” in the audience, and knocking stuff like that over to have fun is typical of Haikyuu stage. I’m going to work even harder at that as Tanaka the Captain of Pumping Up. (laughs) I hope there’s an osmosis effect as, you know, a new type of entertainment.
I heard some of the sets were included as part of the Haikyuu exhibition. I bet you’ll be surprised to see how big they are up close. The dents and marks on the floor we used, that insane angle… This is the place we stood at full strength. It might still have traces of our tears and sweat, and nikuman and anman. (laughs) You must love Haikyuu stage very much to come to this exhibition. I’m very, very grateful. I hope seeing the real things makes you feel all kinds of things, and if you like next time you come to one of the plays please have a go at cheering and calling out. It’s only going to get better from here~!
Scans, as usual, available via @engekihaikyuuhere. See end for notes.
Before we started shoen rehearsals, Worry-san held a workshop where we split up into Karasuno and Seijou teams and each picked a single kanji and a song that made us think of the team… any song, didn’t matter what kind, that made us think “this!”. We had to think about a color, as well. And most of us were meeting each other for the first time, so it was all pure, like, “What about this one, maybe?” During times like that, your personality obviously comes out, and it’s a chance for you to learn how others are thinking. That left a big impression on me as “This is how Worry-san does things.” Now we can bat around those sorts of ideas as a matter of course, but having that experience before orthodox rehearsals began was really big. I very much think that the staff are the ones who first established our foundations.
I’m always thinking about aiming for the ‘summit’ of a new type of theater, and I say that a lot, but what we’re attempting is both theater and performance. [see footnote.] As actors, that’s absolutely the main thing we’re thinking about, so – in a good way – we’re not trapped in the 2.5D genre, and both the genre itself and our performance improve together, in synergy. That’s our fundamental attitude. A critical element of that is “heat” [passion], and so shoen may have been the most unpolished, but I want the audience to see that volatility for themselves, er, (laughter) rather, thinking back on it that’s totally part of its attraction… The heat was really at a boiling point, I think. There was a certain amount of roughness we couldn’t predict, so the work we did to make up for those moments in the final product gave rise to a passion and energy that was really just like reading the comic. That means of expression is something unique to Haikyuu Stage, and our strength, and a point of pride. I flatter myself that we might be in a new category altogether.
Hinata is… hard. That’s the one point I feel strongly on. Even now, every week a new Hinata appears, and after reading I find myself thinking “He’s going that far, huh” or “he’s really growing” – in the present continuous tense. In addition to focusing on that, being the “current” Hinata is of course an unknown quantity. That’s exactly why when there are scenes [in the manga] like, “Ah, I did something like this in one of the ad libs”, I think “Good, I wasn’t mistaken.” When a certain interpretation of Hinata I tried out links up with the source material, it feels like someone showed me the answer key, like, “I’m doing it from the same point of view.” It’s gratifying. With Kageyama… Tatsunari and I talk about how to play our roles surprisingly infrequently, and I feel like that produces trust between us. We’re at the point where we can read each other’s intent, or like, often we somehow understand, “Oh, right now he’s seeing this in me, and getting this from me.”
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about how much easier this would be if I thought of it as just work. I’ve been a huge fan of the original manga from the start, so it’s really important to me… I’m taking a lot on myself, you know? Of course, we have an amazing group of people here and I really want to work together with them even more to create this production… My feelings are complicated, I don’t know either. Yeah, this is what I do for fun. (huge laugh) Honestly, I have confidence in it right down to the “!!” at the end, and this is a production that repays fans’ love with more love, so I hope they feel confident in coming to see it. I absolutely want to keep delivering a good product. We want to keep growing as the genre “Haikyuu stage”, and to create our own unique world. I want to keep doing Haikyuu stage until my legs come off. (laughter)
Translator’s note: When Kenta says what they are attempting is both “theater and performance”, the words he uses are engeki (演劇) and shibai (芝居). Engeki was the word coined in the Meiji era for Western drama, while shibai had previously referred to performaning arts such as kabuki and puppet theater. They are now used in overlapping contexts and do not directly translate to English particularly well. Haaaaa. Essentially, what Kenta is trying to say is that the troupe isn’t just focused on eyecatching theatrical elements (projection mapping, the 2.5D “look”, etc.), but also pure acting and story. …maybe if I weren’t just an amateur theater fan I’d be better at putting this in words. Both showmanship and technique? Anyway for further reading in English on the differentiation between the two and concepts of Japanese theatricality I recommend critic and academic Mitsuya Mori.
