One year after "Compartment City - Tokyo", Port B proceeds to their next stage: the Yamanote Line

Port B. has been raising attention with tour performances and installations that apply elements of our urban spaces today, sceneries and memories of contemporary society and media. In Festival/Tokyo 09 Spring they revived two works of the Ikebukuro trilogy, "Clouds, Home" and "Sunshine 63". In the autumn festival of that same year they created a stir with their new work "Compartment City - Tokyo" by setting up lifelike imitations of typical Japanese sex industry locations like private video compartments and a Deai-Café (match-making café).

Their new work "The Complete Manual of Evacuation - Tokyo" will occur at various locations around the Yamanote Line. Nearby every of the Yamanote Line train stations an 'evacuation area' will be set up. A communicational system that enables the audiences to come into contact with communities that usually remain unseen in the shape of our present-day cities forms the overarching frame for the project. The dialogue starts via Internet and then spreads to several districts in Tokyo. (A venture with the aim of disrobing theatre.)

A theatrical architecture, designing a new form of encounter

The audience can apply for participation on the Internet. After they finished their registration, they are told where to go, and the game begins! The persons they speak with via chat, are people belonging to communities they usually don't get in touch with in their daily lives. Due to the system of this theatrical architecture, the audiences are able to participate, wherever they are, if they just have Internet connection - from their private home, their office or an internet-café. A man to man chat starts and in case the participant visits the respective evacuation area, will continue face to face. Will new communities arise from these encounters transforming from an Internet conversation to a personal meeting on location?

The evacuation areas hidden at various districts of the city might be places we are very familiar with such as family restaurants, karaoke boxes, internet cafes, counseling rooms for people at risk committing suicide, or fortune telling rooms. The encounters of the participants that visit one of the evacuation areas nearby the 29 Yamanote Line stations will also be visible openly, so that is possible for everyone to re-experience the new communities emerging in the frame of "The Complete Manual of Evacuation - Tokyo". Will this new work by Port B redefine the mode of communities in our present day cities through the frame of theatre?

Communities unseen in the shape of our present-day cities

The title of the work "The Complete Manual of Evacuation - Tokyo" refers to the book "The Complete Manual of Suicide" (1993). An initial point is the question, how we can open up spaces for "escape" in the contemporary society. This topic is strongly linked to Port B's previous projects "Compartment City - Tokyo" and "Red Shoes Chronicles" (Yokohama). It puts minorities into focus who are often disregarded in the mainstream image flow: homeless people, people from other Asian countries residing in Japan, Internet-café refugees, McDonald refugees and the so called "working poor" class. We read the city from their point of view and rediscover through their and our evacuation areas a new shape of Tokyo.