Description

Target Audience: All ages

Duration: 50 minutes

Synopsis

“Tasogare Mononoke House” is a summer time story about a young boy growing up set against the backdrop of a traditional Japanese custom called Obon. Obon is an event held around mid-August to welcome the spirits of ancestors back to this world and make offerings to them, with family relatives gathering together, visiting graves, and local people organizing Bon-Odori dance festivals.

The main character is a young boy who feels very bored staying home alone as his family is busy working all summer, even though it is summer vacation. The boy is attracted to the mysterious Bon-Odori dance parade and follows it. Unknowingly he has travelled to another world. It is just as the sun is setting. This time of day, when you can no longer recognize people's faces, is called “Tasogare” in Japanese. The origin of the word is “Who are you?”

The Bon Odori parade takes the boy to the home of his grandfather who loved him very much but who is actually dead. He enters the rickety house, now uninhabited, and finds rooms filled with his grandfather's favourite objects. The old objects left behind by his grandfather, which are no longer in use, move and come to life as they are transformed into Mononoke (ghosts), which surprises the boy.

Through his encounters with these creatures, he is able to touch and feel his grandfather's feelings that he never felt before. An experience that helps him meet a new and different self.

Original music played together with piano, gamelan, and household items, as well as folk songs that show the roots of each member from different origins, are also important elements of our performance. Sound effects of toys and household items are also key elements. The show uses Japanese dialogue and singing in other languages as they are.

Written by Ilbong

Art direction by Nanang Ananto Wicaksono

Music by Taisuke Enami, Hiromi Arasaki and Yuri Nishida

Artist Profile

Magica Mamejika is an Osaka-based art group that works based on the Indonesian shadow puppetry tradition, Wayang Kulit. In addition to Nanang Ananto Wicaksono as a dalang (puppeteer) and Yuri Nishida as a gamelan player, the group members also include Ilbong as a poetic performer, Taisuke Enami as a musician, and Hiromi Arasaki as a pianist.

The group performs original performance works in which shadows, music, sounds, words and objects interweave freely. In these works, various types of music from old, contemporary to world music, and various cultures from the members' backgrounds coexist.

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