Production Language English
Country of Origin Switzerland
Description Hashirigaki, loosely translated from the Japanese as "the act
of walking, thinking, and talking at the same time," is the first word of a renowned Kabuki play. It is also the fittingly evocative title of postmodernist composer and director Heiner Goebbels' captivating work for the always-adventurous Théâtre Vidy-Lausanne of Switzerland.
For 80 nonstop minutes, three virtuosic performers deliver an electrifying cross-cultural fusion of sound, images, and movement inspired by Brian Wilson's haunting music for The Beach Boys' 1966 album Pet Sounds and the seemingly disparate thrills of Gertrude Stein's devilishly enigmatic 1908 composition The Making of Americans. It's an experience at once bucolic and surreal, set within a series of gorgeously lit tableaux. The mood is lighthearted, infused with wit and touches of mystery.
Like Stein and Wilson, Goebbels revels in the unanswerable
question, and Hashirigaki is time-spanning nexus for these three pioneering artists-each captured at the height of their creative powers, any of whom would be aptly described by Pet Sounds' "I Just Wasn't Made for These Times."
Identifier 2003s.00760
