“After a performance, I came out into the lobby where a middle-aged Dutch woman was waiting to see me. She politely inquired, “What is Hans doing now?” I responded, “Who do you mean by Hans?” “Hans Buruma, my husband,” she said. As she explained it, Hans Buruma was once in charge of mail delivery at the Amsterdam Central Post Office. Three years before, he had attended Heretics (Jashumon), a guest production from Tokyo presented by my theatre troupe at the Mickery Theater. Just after the play began, two men masked in black leaped down into the audience area, grabbed her husband by the arms, and forcibly dragged him up onto the stage. Once onstage, Hans was dressed in a costume and made up, and before he knew it, he had become a character in the play. At least two times during the course of the play, she clearly saw her husband joining other characters who together pulled the ropes. He seemed to be enjoying himself. But when the play was over, Hans never returned to his seat in the audience. The wife waited for two hours, then went to the dressing room, but the members of the company had already returned to the hotel. That night, Hans failed to come home. After two more nights, he still hadn’t returned. By then, the company had left Holland and moved on to West Germany. She thought he had joined the company, that “they hired Hans for his acting skill.” She thought, “My husband is in the play.” Now. after three years had passed, she was pleading with me, “Please give me back my husband.” I had to tell her that I had never heard this story before. Neither I nor anyone in the company knew a middle-aged Dutchman named Hans Buruma. There was no evidence indicating that such a person had been with us during the past three years. When I told her that I didn’t know him, she was on the verge of tears. “Then where is Hans?” she asked. Three years ago–one middle-aged male post-office delivery worker evaporated into our play. In this case, we cannot distinguish where the drama ends and reality begins.”
— Shuji Terayama, The Labyrinth and the Dead Sea: My Theatre, translated by Carol Sorgenfried in Unspeakable Acts: The Avant-Garde Theatre of Terayama Shuji
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