OIWA – The Ghost of Yotsuya: Primal story of love, or the failures of it
about 35 months ago (06/05/2021)
OIWA - The Ghost of Yotsuya: Primal story of love, or the failures of it | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia ArtsEquator Viewpoints Courtesy of Arts House Limited June 5, 2021 An epic set, an epic story, and epic four years of painstaking training is one way to describe The Finger Players’ OIWA – The Ghost of Yotsuya, an aching horror story that retells the classic tale of vengeance revolving around a jilted woman. Combining techniques of Kabuki , Bunraku and Ningyo Buri , as well as the Singapore theatre company’s own methodology when it comes to actor training for these forms, OIWA is one of the rare shows in these COVID times that manages to achieve both spectacle and stagecraft coupled with a kind of sacredness one associates most strongly with live theatre. The various phases of training for the actors, especially for the Singaporeans, involved putting implements under the armpits and walking with a higher centre of gravity to create the desired gait and rigidity a puppet made of wood would have.