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April 12, 2005

Tetsuwari Crack Iron Albatrossket

Tetsuwari Crack Iron Albatrossket is an experimental theatre troupe and may be Japan's premier dramatic ironists and meta-comedians. Tetsuwari's leader and playwrite Inui Akihito's descends from a long line of famous actors/writers, but he's also a student of Monty Python, The Harder They Come, and modernist drama.

Usually based in a community center in old-timey Nezu, their short segments deconstruct traditional shitamachi culture and theatre itself through self-reference and absurdist techniques. Characters talk in parallel directions, rarely understanding each other, whether they be discussing the pirate chic of dead canaries, the mystery of hard-boiled eggs, high-quality glass polishing for uptown bars, or prophicies involving Damo Suzuki and an elephant-shaped Trojan Horse. There's also a surplus of dance routines and male choral group parodies with synchronized kleenex waving. Tetsuwari avoids the trap of dramatic pretention through their mix of "real" actors and stumbling amateurs: it's hard to tell if the guy in the state-provided glasses is pretending to forget his lines or just forgetting his lines. At the very least, they blow the entire mainstream o-warai world out of the water, and I would postpone final judgement on the possiblities of Japanese comedy until experiencing the live Tetsuwari show.

Posted by marxy at April 12, 2005 6:08 PM

Comments

Posted by: r. at April 14, 2005 8:27 PM