My name is I LOVE YOU

マイネーム　イズ　アイラブユー

What's 「MY NAME IS I LOVE YOU」

「MY NAME IS I LOVE YOU」was the second performance held under Faifai´s previous name Koyubichi in May 2005. Its conceptual framework was to remove all spoken lines from dramatic dialogue and to express them through emotional body language instead. While the raw movements of these young and undisciplined bodies, accompanied by onle one male narrator, could not exactly be called "dance", it was their vividness that allowed the feelings of the characters to gain shape before the audience.
This body-centered approach to theater still remains a defining element for today´s Faifai.

「MY NAME IS I LOVE YOU」, re-performed in middle school English

This abroad performance was staged in March 2009. In order to let a large native and foreign audience participate, the text was rewritten entirely in words found in English textbooks for Japanese middle school (compulsory education). This time, the narrator´s voice was done by a female Hungarian member of Faifai.
Major changes were applied to the script. The original shift from spoken to body language was taken one step further by including so-called Minimal Japanese during the performance. Minimal Japanese are short murmurs or onomatopoeic expressions that overlap or interfere with the English narration. The performers´ bodies are pushed and pulled around by these Japanese expressions; the simultaneous use of multiple languages, and especially their semantic frictions add a new dimension to dramatic text.

Love - a new approach

The reason why this style was chosen for the performance lies within the director´s concept of "love". During the first performance, the characters were deprived of language and had to rely on their bodies to express what they feel. This new language, born from bodily expression, should directly communicate to the audience; however, the act of "communicating" or "transmitting" itself should not be seen as the ideal form of love.

"We cannot understand each other" - that´s the initial assumption of this project. People from different cultural, linguistic or even religious context all share the English language as a means of communication, yet it´s impossible to reach full mutual understanding when it comes to matters of the heart. This can even be said about people who speak in their mother tongue, as for instance Japanese. But does it really matter if we fully understand each other? Isn´t love the very act of co-existing without being able to know exactly what is going on in each other´s mind? To live in the same time, to share the same space, to experience the same moment? Old and young, men and women, east and west, all brought together on common ground in a fragile but precious balance - to be yourself while living in this balance is what it means to "love".

「MY NAME IS I LOVE YOU」never openly speaks of this form of "love" on stage, as it is deeply merged with the conceptual framework of this project.

Winners of the ZKB Patronage Prize 2010

The European Tours held from 2009 onwards received attention from many sides. In 2010, the play was the first Japanese work to win the ZKB Patronage Prize at the Zürcher Theaterspektakel Festival.