Why Are You Coming Here?

Duration | Feb. - May. 2021 Location | Platform Theatre, Central Saint Martin, London, UK

Playwright/ Director: Giulia Vitiello, Sharo Liang, Kano Yanagiya     Performer: Giulia Vitiello Light design: Sharo Liang                                              Voice over actor: Taishi Mashimo

On table, dialogues flow between a women and an anonymous speaker. The conversation follows antiparallel lines, sometimes seems to match and then goes back into following a different direction. This piece explores the concept of stream of consciousness, memory, denial, forced communication, confinement, rejection of society and self-isolation, which we believe to be important thematics in this contemporary context.

To portrait the concept of control and being control by the outside world and also the character’s own memories, we designed the room between reality and her inner world where she’s forced to face a series of question, without knowing where and what she will encounter next. From constant discussion and rewriting the script to form this character, we dive deep into her perception by combining our own experience of facing solitude. Her loneliness, fear and depression become a force to reject the order of society, however at the same time, she grows strength and energy to live from the complex emotion.

This project started with my own interest in experimenting conversation. I brought up the idea of two person writing script for two character, with the restriction of one can only ask question and the other only answer. During the writing process, we are not allowed to communicate what we wrote to each other, and in the end we put them up together to form this script. The script is like a two monologue, the one questions is very cold, robotic and systematic which represent the bureaucratic authority. I get the inspiration from social regulation, such as border check, police interrogation and mental therapy. The other character is portraied by overlaying Giulia— our co-director’s grandmother’s and her own life experience and memory of her past together. To refine the relationship between two characters, we also look into the some references like “1984 ” by George Orwell, “4.48 psychosis” from Sarah Kane, Martin Crimp and Natalie Sarraute. For the cinematography we had look into Andrei Tarkovsky’s “Nostalgia (1983) ” and “Mirror (1975) ”, “Goodbye to Language (2004)” Jean Luc-Godard.