November 15th, 2024 marks the 40th anniversary of the inaugural performance of the Tokyo Grand Guignolâs Mercuro at the Art Theater Shinjuku. While it isnât fully complete yet, now feels as good a time as ever to share here the current progress of my new translation of Mercuro, an updated âtext adaptionâ as I put it that crosses the full script from June Novel with details that were given through photos, video footage and recollections from audience members. The reason for this is to account for the fact that Mercuro wasnât a literary play, but an Artaudian experience Ameya conceived in efforts to override what he saw as being a wordy pretention in contemporary theater, his direction even being described before as a sot of "destruction" of Taganeâs writing. Judging Mercuro by just K. Taganeâs text would arguably be missing half the picture, so Iâve done my best to account what I imagine from the evidence that exists what Ameyaâs half would've been like to maintain a decent balance.
The first act of the play is fully available in two parts for free on my Substack, the second act is still in progress and will be steadily serialized as I finish enough progress on it:
- MERCURO (Text Adaption) : ACT 1 : SCENE 1
- MERCURO (Text Adaption) : ACT 1 : SCENES 2 & 3
The process has been a difficult and laborious one in consideration of not just the scarcity of original materials, but the lack of publicly available media as well. Much of Ameyaâs direction is not just in the actors, but the handling of visuals and sound design as well, calling back to his influences from Artaudâs more viscerally ritualistic view of theater as a practice. While a handful of songs are known to have been featured, there are still many gaps in between of not just how the songs were sequenced, but how Ameya wouldâve edited them as well. A full video recording of Mercuroâs original run (not to be confused with the abridged 1985 Mercuroid TV performance) exists, but it is only in the hands of private collectors.
Despite the hurdles throughout my research, through a combination of artistic dedication with what could best be described as obsessive stubbornness against the odds I was able to track down all the materials I could. Special thanks goes to Yu Hirayama of @suikazuraofficial (known for their music compilations, the subculture magazine FEECO and the Steven Stapleton biography Nurse With Woundè©äŒ) for personally providing a copy of the Mercuro volume of June magazine and the Roadsiders article The Time That The Flyers Came To Town. I recommend anyone with an interest in subculture to look into his publications.
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