Location: Yokohama, Japan

Program: Theatre set design

Area: NA

Client: Kanagawa Arts Theatre (KAAT)

Status: Completed, 2017

Collaborators:

Theater Director: Akira Takayama, PortB

Set Construction: KAAT

Designed with K2LAB of Waseda University

Going beyond conventional frameworks of theater, Akira Takayama’s “Wagner Project” brings the opera Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg and street hip-hop together. 

From October 20th of 2017, the project held public auditions along with lectures, workshops, MC battles, cyphers and other events where crews demonstrated their rapping and poetry skills. The nine-day event - aimed at creating a new community within the theatre - showcased graffiti by snipe1, film archives and installations among others, presenting Wagner like it had never been seen before.

The stage set challenges the steet-ification of Wagner’s theatre by decentralizing and breaking up the stage. While the initial set was delivered as a bare framework, the accumulated traces and archives from each of the 9 performance days gradually inhabited and transformed the space.