Ooooops this was supposed to go out 2 days ago! 

Been a little while since I last did a blog on my adventure in Japan.

Wow what a week it has been.

So not sure where I left it all last time round.

Let me start by telling you about the weekend and my trip to the newly refurbished Kubukiza National Theatre to watch some Kabuki.  After a 2 hour wait we managed to get some highly sought after tickets and more importantly some seats, to watch 1 Act of some Kabuki.  It was an interesting spectacle aesthetically, the crowd reaction was interesting as it did feel similar to that of a pantomime, with the crowd getting excited when favourite characters or actors took the stage.

Monday was the start of rehearsals for Assembly and all was well until I was told one of our actors had to drop out due to damaging his leg and requiring a operation on the Tuesday.  So there was a quick scramble to find a replacement.  We were fortunate and found a new team member who joined us late Monday afternoon.

It has been interesting as a process and one that has needed quite some thinking through.  Many questions and thoughts have arisen and the notion of narratives within Assemblies has been a very interesting idea to work without having a writer to work with.  Currently the story for this Assembly event is:

Setting:  Research Lab in Tokyo.

Performers: Experts/ Leading Scientists within their field of Economy, Energy, Environment and Efficiency. 

Story: A new habitable planet has been discovered.  With Earth at tipping point this could prove to be our salvation.  However we need to learn from the mistakes we have made on Earth.  The experts want to know to set up life on this new planet but in order to do this we need to know where things went wrong here on Earth.  

This research is to engage the people of Tokyo about global, national and local issues around the themes.

What problems are there with current economic structures - in this new place what kind of an Economy should we have?  

How should energy be generated?  

How are we treating our environment?  What have we learnt from this? 

How should the towns and cities of this place be designed to provide efficient living?

Should be interesting to see what thoughts and ideas come out and how people react.  There will be origami, hiaku writing and most importantly debate and discussions.

Get involved and tweet #ntwjapan or message me back about your thoughts on the following questions:

Energy - should we keep using nuclear energy? Why?

Efficiency - one thing big cities can do to be more efficient?

Environment - If the UK suddenly became a tropical island - one positive and one negative.

Economy - Should we have a single global currency?