Nuhikun.-.Directions.to.Servants.(Tenjo.Sajiki.experimental.theater,.Shuji.Terayama,.1978).avi 
Nuhikun.-.Directions.to.Servants.(Tenjo.Sajiki.experimental.theater,.Shuji.Terayama).(posters).rar Nuhikun.-.Directions.to.Servants.(Shuji.Terayama,.translated.into.English.by.Tony.Rayns.and.Shigenobu.Nishiguchi).pdf I am quite thrilled to be able to share this piece: it was a lucky find on the Japanese P2P network Share. I've always dreamed of watching an actual Tenjo Sajiki production: the recent on-stage renditions of Terayama's plays seemed as watered down to me as they were glossed over. So, today, I finally got a chance to watch the real thing.
The quality of this video recording is very low, but that's probably as much as we'll ever get. Obviously, there are no subtitles. From a few hints in various Internet sources, it seems that Tony Rayns may have translated Terayama's play into English at some point, but I have not been able to locate any references to the actual translation, nor am I sure if it has been published at all... Tenjo Sajiki rocks!!!
EDIT 19Apr2007: An English translation of the script added. Huge thanks goes to murdermystery@KaraGarga!
...it was interesting to see the acrobatic Japanese actors of the Tenjosajiki company in Shuji Terayama’s Directions to servants. The title and some of the text were taken from Swift’s satire, but the main inspiration seemed to come from Genet’s Les bonnes. Multiplying the maids into a large cast of servants, male and female, who take it in turns to imitate the master, Tereyama has physicalized and partly mechanized the action. Domination is imposed partly through machines—we see a man submitting to an imperious voice on a tape recorder, lowering his trousers and climbing inside a sadistic machine that beats his bare buttocks.
The ingenuity, the sadism and the offbeat humour are all characteristic of the production. The main cruelty to the audience was in the over-amplification of J.A. Seazer’s music. I sat with my hands over my ears for a lot of the time. The visual assault was almost equally strong, and some of the theatrical imagery was quite unlike anything that had been seen in this country. In one meticulously choreographed sequence the servant playing at being master throws a bone to a succession of servants who play at being dogs. In another, a servant trying to steal food from a cupboard is terrified to find that it is like a puzzle: each panel conceals a face that sings at him accusingly, and he can silence it only by sliding a panel that reveals another singing face.
(http://www.english.fsu.edu/jobs/num04/Num4Hayman.htm)
