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The body of Ota Shogo's work is quite extraordinary, actually,

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and three of the plays that he created

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were non-verbal physical scores or psychophysical scores

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for his company of actors.

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Ota talks about his work sometimes as a drama,

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these particular plays, as a drama of silence,

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which is first and foremost a process of divestiture

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or divesting oneself of anything unnecessary,

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necessary, a process of stripping away, in other words, dramaturgically of language,

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so that these plays kind of render the essence of action stripped of words.

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And so the actors have to be able to speak without speaking.

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Ota has said of these plays, the actors are speaking, you just can't hear them.

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So that the plays demand a kind of relationship, an interior relationship to the qualitative

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dimensions of sound, of the auditory awareness, of tactile touch, whether that's of the feet

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to the floor or to the surface they're moving in, the feel of the water, the feel of skin,

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feel of an umbrella, of a property. There's a kind of a sense in which Ota talks about

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these plays as living silence, which is not the absence of any sound per se, but a process

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of turning down, so to speak, the volume of everyday life by abandoning the noise and

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clutter of constant conversation.

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So Ota's theatrical silence is equally created by slowing the actors down so that every movement,

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every action performed is divested of anything unnecessary.

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It's interesting, Mel Gossa, the New York Times critic, well-known critic, commented

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on Oat's own production of The Water Station.

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With a really interesting kind of comment,

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he said it was slowed down almost to a standstill

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so that every second seems like a minute,

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and sometimes the movement is so minimal

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that it's imperceptible.

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During those rare moments

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when there's a quick gesture by one of the actors,

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one is startled out of what has become

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an almost trance-like state for the audience.