Instead of standards such as "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," or Shakespeare, the drama club at Iwaki Sogo High School wanted to stage something edgier and darker, centered around the Great East Japan Earthquake.
Instead of standards such as "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," or Shakespeare, the drama club at Iwaki Sogo High School wanted to stage something edgier and darker, centered around the Great East Japan Earthquake.
Their play, which combines both the tragedy of disaster victims and the comedy of some of those involved, is touching a chord with audiences.
"We hope to bring out the anger by making fun of the reality," said Yukiko Nagase, 18, a senior, who is head of the drama club.
The club took top honors at the November prefectural competition among Fukushima high schools and will make its second straight appearance at the Tohoku regional competition scheduled to begin from Dec. 16 in Yamagata city.
The play, titled "Final Fantasy for XI, III, MMXI," was put together by the 30 members of the drama club.
The setting is a high school damaged by natural disasters. The plot includes a girl student hoping for a reunion with a friend who was swept away by the tsunami as well as boy students who want to restore the cultural festival that was canceled due to the disaster. The characters in the play go in search of a "spell of restoration" capable of returning the situation at the school to what it was like before the disaster.
A girl student in the play tries to reach the area in the no-entry zone set up after the accident at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant where a time capsule was buried. Along the way, she encounters feral dogs and cattle.
The scene is based on the actual experience of Kirika Igari, 17, a junior who performs the role of the friend of the girl student in the play.
When Igari returned temporarily wearing protective clothing to her home in Naraha within the no-entry zone from an evacuation site in Iwaki, she saw cattle running around in the parking lot of a supermarket.
"They became that way because that is what suited humans," she said. "I wanted to definitely include something about animals in the play."
While the Iwaki Sogo High School itself was damaged in the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, fortunately no students died.
After the disasters, classes resumed in late April.
Club members shared various concerns such as whether they would ever be able to marry someone from outside of Fukushima Prefecture and worries about whether they would die of cancer.
"I personally was in total despair," said Michiko Ishii, 47, the teacher who serves as adviser to the drama club.
The club resumed its activities in mid-May. They shared their experiences and thoughts from right after the disaster and nuclear accident and completed the play by putting together a number of etudes, or improvisation acts.
There are also a number of humorous scenes in the play, including ones in which the economy, trade and industry minister and prime minister repeatedly say, "(The nuclear accident) will not have an immediate effect on human health."
In another scene, boy students use professional wrestling moves to topple a tribe of "elite TEPCO officials," poking fun at Tokyo Electric Power Co., the operator of the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant.
The bits of humor help to lighten the mood of a plot that reflects the extremely severe reality experienced by disaster victims.
When the club performed the play in Kobe's Nagata Ward, which was one of the hardest hit during the Great Hanshin Earthquake of 1995, the audience applauded loudly.
The club hopes to do well at the Tohoku regional competition in order to advance to the national competition.
It plans to perform the play in Tokyo on Dec. 21 and 22 at the Atelier Helicopter in Shinagawa Ward.
"While I believe the thoughts toward the natural disasters and nuclear accident will differ in different locations, I want the audience to know the reality that we face," Igari said.