THE DAMASK DRUM

Mishima in the City: Duets of Desire, Stage 2

A warehouse in Abbotsford, 2006

“Damask Drum: An endless dance of death… I could not help but be transfixed”

John Bailey, Realtime Vol 77, November 2006 - read full review

“The Damask Drum is not only theatre that has poetry in it - which is one thing - but something rather more rare: a poetic theatre, working transformations rich and strange.”

Alison Croggon, TheatreNotes, November 12, 2006 - read full review

"This rendition of The Damask Drum is an eloquent and powerfully moving song of the damned....it seems that the bodies of the performers are afflicted, almost diseased, by a surfeit of emotion that words alone cannot contain....But the most innovative feature of this production is its use of film....The audio-visuals lend an eerie spectrality to the production, but they also relocate Noh in an urban context, where the gaps between people can be as large as the gaps between buildings - large enough, certainly, for love to fall through without a trace."

Cameron Woodhead, The Melbourne Age, November 28, 2006 - read full review

Presented in Liminal’s temporary accomodation in Abbotsford, the 2006 adaptation of Mishima’s text and the original Noh play Aya No Tsuzumi by Zeami continued Liminal Theatre’s research into:
- The Contemporary Noh plays of Mishima Yukio (1925-1970).
- The traditional 13th century Noh plays that Mishima drew on.
- The writings of Japanese actor and playwright Zeami Motokiyo (1363-1443) on actor training.
- The philosophy and practice of Indonesian director and Liminal collaborator Sardono Kusumo.
- The tension between live performance and digital images.

Liminal wove the source material into a poem about a ghost inhabiting a macabre and empty world of desire, unable to escape death. A man caught in a never-ending cycle of awakening in the memory of an unobtainable woman. A story suspended in a gap between two worlds; the deep pool of our yearnings and cold winds of our isolation.

The Damask Drum was the second production in the Mishima in the City Project.

Director: Robert Draffin
Film: Ivanka Sokol
Set design: Ina Indira Shanahan
Lighting design: Luke Hails
Sound design and music performance: Jethro Woodward
Costume design: Jessie Willow Tucker
Stage management: Richard Whitehouse
Publicity: Mandy Hildebrand
Performers: Alan Knoepfler and Mary Sitarenos
Film acting, voices and stage business: Paul Robertson / Raffaele Rufo / Claire Nicholls

THE DAMASK DRUM

The Damask Drum rehearsal - drafting

Production video