BWW Blog: Siobhan O'Loughlin - Broken Bone Bathtub World Premiere in Tokyo

I was completely terrified. Thoughts in my head on the day of the show opening:

What am I doing a world premiere in Tokyo for? I don't speak any Japanese and even with subtitles, I reckon a Japanese audience will not understand me or like me. One of my brothers just got his phD, and the other is a TV actor now. They are better than me. What am I doing with my life?!

Is anyone even coming to this? I don't think anyone is coming to this.

Do I know my lines?! WHAT IF FORGET MY LINES WHILE I'M NAKED that could be the worst.

They will hate me.

They will probably think I'm fat.

I met with my producer, Amanda Waddell, around 12:30 (because I was late and wandering like a frightened bird around the subway stations) and we found our way to the house we had booked to make the performance happen. (Airbnb! I wrote to a woman there, asked if it was okay if we performed, she said yes-this is a great way to go about doing house shows!)

Shortly after Amanda and I walked around this LUXURIOUS home, our staff-Futaba, Tan Tan and Suei-chan all arrived. I need to say now that they are each incredible people. Full of humor, friendliness and a great desire to be helpful and kind. I am moved by all of their efforts with my show, and grateful to Amanda for making all of this happen and finding incredible people for me to work with.

And so we figured out how it would work. Amanda would be off to rehearsal for another show (she's a busy multi-talented woman!) which put Futaba in charge. Futaba is now a professional bubble bath maker (she made HUGE bubbles for me each time) and also runs the subtitles, which are projected through Amanda's projector in a perfect space above the window in the bathroom. The audience hardly has to change their line of focus-it's incredible. Futaba is a huge help to me, following me with her AWESOME LOOKING SCRIPT that has my words and the Japanese translations alongside it. That warms my heart so much.

So, while Futaba and I are upstairs making bubbles and looking at projections, Tan Tan waits at the train station where she can pick up our audience and walk them to the secret location. (We decided it had to be Tan Tan and not Suei...because a boy holding up my poster just felt weird). Tan Tan brings the audience to our house, where Suei is waiting at our "box office" and reception area. He manages front of house, gives the all clear that I'm in the tub and ready for them, and Futaba lets the audience into the bathroom with me.

The bathroom is TINY of course, Amanda had a really nice foresight to snag some tiny little stools for folks to sit on; something I hadn't thought was necessary but I'm now realizing is a great idea. The space is SMALL as we thought (and the show is ready for that-audiences of 3-5 people are what we are looking at) and Amanda put the three stools right up beside each other, and the 4th stool right behind them over the door threshold.

That's it. That's what we're working with.

That's what the show is all about.

I am SO NERVOUS AS THE AUDIENCE WALKS IN, I am in the tub, with my eyes closed and facing the wall, to make it less weird for all of us when they come in and deal with the shock that they are literally up against the bathtub which I am naked in. I hear some nervous/delighted giggles from them as they settle, and I can't help but giggle too. Because really, when I think about it, this is the weirdest thing I've ever done. I am sitting here naked in a bubble bath in front of people who do not speak the same language as me and there are projections in Japanese above me and what am I DOING here!?

But I opened my eyes, and saw four completely handsome young Japanese men with cool haircut, stylish clothes, smiling eyes and intrigued expressions on their faces. I smiled at them, they smiled back. I did the show.

(Disclaimer here: What person WOULDN'T delight at such a gorgeous looking group of audience members when you are doing such an incredibly intimate show?)

Sometimes I would look up at the subtitles, just marveling at the fact that another language was being read as I was speaking it in English. But what I truly must acknowledge as a beautiful thing here was the ability of these young men to read the subtitles and still make eye contact with me almost the entire time. I blushed a lot, and we all laughed a lot, and when I asked one of the guests, Yasushi, to shampoo my hair, he gave me a head massage too. The other boys reveled in this-they loved it. I felt completely honored by this group who gave so much to me, and were right there with me, though I know the language may have been a barrier.

The second show was just as lovely, and also included an artist named Raynard Lee Forrest, a dancer I met at an open mic at a bar called What The Dickens! In Ebisu. Ray is a trained dancer in Aikido, but he can really do just about everything, and he blew EVERYONE away at his performance last week, so it was an incredible honor and joy to have him in the bathroom with me.

We've arranged the show to work where I can go downstairs afterwards and say hello, after I throw on a bathrobe (Christmas present from my mom!) and a towel on my head. After both performances, these wonderful people were downstairs waiting for me, either writing notes in my guest book, or just waiting to speak. They were eager to provide comments, or to ask questions, or to discuss a bit of what I do and why I wanted to perform in Japan.

So, why did I want to perform in Japan? The simple reason is, why not? But the other honest reason is, because I want to be an artist who is connected with the world.

That is maybe the cheesiest line I've written in my life. I think my teenage poetry about tuning a piano as metaphor for a controlling relationship was better than that.

But I mean it. I mean to say, I want to reach people outside of my personal sphere, outside of what I consider my "audience" to be. I want to know artists in other places, I want to learn and see how they receive live performance, and how I can be a part of that. It really can't be denied that Tokyo is an incredible city, that Japan has a very rich theatre culture and history, and I admire that so much.

So, really...why not?

Two comments that really stayed with me when the groups left "my house" that night were from one of the young gents at the early crowd telling Futaba that he felt healed after this show, and a gent from the second show saying that this changed his mind and perception of what theatre could be.

Each person said (in Japanese) that this was their first time being a part of anything like this show.

And because today was my world premiere, I was able to respond,

"Mine too."

DAY TWO

Four shows in one day, with two (bilingual) talkbacks after. It was a blast. I am now the cleanest I've ever been.

After last night, there was much less apprehension felt about performing this show. We could do it, we did do it, it ran beautifully actually, and it could be done again.

And it was. One show after the next.

When we first planned how to perform Broken Bone Bathtub, Amanda had decided it was VERY important to include lots of bubbles and to be sure they kept me covered, and also to be cautious about the touching-if anyone was ever seeming uncomfortable, I'd need to manage that accordingly. I promised I would. This is an interesting challenge, considering I'd been in Japan for only one week, my first time in Asia ever, and I had to gauge their comfort level with touching me in a bathtub when I don't have any clothes on-how do you gauge anyone's comfort this way?

I just focused on them, as they focused on me. And they were attentive, and generous, and of course anxious at first. But what was so lovely here was discovering that the moments where I would ask for help-"how are you at a hand massage?" It seemed to relax the whole group, every time. We'd all laugh. The person helping with the bath was put on the spot, but I'd assure them, and let them off the hook early, and we'd smile and keep going on.

BBB is of course not just about my experience in a bath. It also has many levels politically-what was going on at the time of my accident in the USA-the trial surrounding Michael Brown's death, the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement,the impact of social movements on an individual. A group of people seeking social change can help a person to heal.

The bilingual talkbacks that followed the performance also traced these themes-of course, the world knows about what's happening in the U.S. I always feel humbled when I know just how much folks in another country know about what's going on in mine. I can't speak for a Japanese audience as to what they might extract from a white westerner discussing the political becoming personal for her in a time of injury and the birth of a racial justice movement. But I can say that our discussion was rich, and full, and challenging, and hopeful. And spoken in two different languages. I am grateful, I am honored, I am humbled. Thank you, Tokyo. Arigatou gozaimasu.

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