Palette Works
Palette Works
Residents research an issue in their own city, write a script about it, and perform it. Then everyone talks about it together.
Sakura Theater Lab is a participatory theater program we plan and run in Kita City, Tokyo. We take something the town is living with — a flood risk, a changing population, an ageing housing estate — and we make a piece of theater about it, with the people who live there.
Participants are recruited openly and are not required to have acted before. They go out and look at the subject for themselves, talk about what they found and what they remember, and turn it into a script. Then they perform it for their neighbours.
Every production ends with a public talk. We invite someone who knows the subject — a researcher, a designer, an engineer — and the cast and the audience think about it together. The performance is not the conclusion. It is the thing that starts the conversation.
Five stages, from walking around the neighbourhood to sitting down with a specialist.
Fieldwork
We go out into the town and see, hear and feel the subject for ourselves.
Writing
Talking as a group, we spin what we experienced and remembered into a story.
Rehearsal
Through games and improvisation, we sharpen how we express it — and enjoy it.
Performance
We perform the piece we built for the people of the neighbourhood.
After-talk
We invite a specialist on the subject and hold a forum with the cast and the audience, to understand it further.
Five productions since 2022. Titles are given as they were performed; synopses are summaries, not translations of the original texts.
In your teens you had youth. In your twenties and thirties, you had drive. In your forties, fifties, sixties — what is left? In the meeting hall of a housing estate, a group of challengers begins what may be its last fight. A fighting story for anyone who is about to start something.
After-talk"Nouvelle Agora Plan" — with 鈴木健介, stage designer and historian of scenography.
Co-hosted with Machi to Kurashi no Bunkasai (Town and Living Culture Festival).
Work that does not connect. People who do not connect. Under this sky where everything seems to be moving away, the thread keeps breaking. But perhaps it does not have to connect. I am here today, and tomorrow — will I always be here? The view from the balcony, the days spent with you, going on. One thing does connect. That is my story.
Co-hosted with Machi to Kurashi no Bunkasai (Town and Living Culture Festival).
Busy, busy. Overtime again today. Busy, busy. I want to give you directions, but there is no time. All right — shall we set off on a journey? A cast of ten people from six countries, gathered through an open call, built and performed this piece.
After-talk"Global Thinking — shall we talk about living together across cultures?" with 村上一基, Associate Professor, Faculty of Sociology, Toyo University.
Foreigners are gathering over there… what language is that? Wait — Japanese people are gathering too. What on earth are they saying? Strange. Well, let us go and look. And then: am I the strange one? A piece made and performed by Japanese and non-Japanese participants who came together through an open call.
Endorsed by the Kita City Cultural Promotion Foundation.
Three people are making a play for a school festival. They meet as usual and start talking about that subject. Something spills over, and once it starts it does not stop — it keeps coming down as words. Like today's rain.
After-talk"Kokokita Kikikuru — shall we talk about flooding in this town?" with 竹順哉 and 伊藤英司.
Hosted by the Hokutopia Theatre Festival Executive Committee.
Funded by Kita City's community-development support program.
Endorsed by the Kita City Cultural Promotion Foundation. In cooperation with Palette Works LLC.
We are glad to share how we build these productions — the fieldwork, the writing, the after-talks — with anyone working in applied or community theater. Visits to a production are welcome.
Get in touch →