Akitsu and I is a collaboration between Akitsu Yamagishi and Nathaniel Mason who make live performance work. They are in the final year at Falmouth University studying Theatre in which they have engaged in an experimental approach to devised performance. Assured that there are more ways to view the world than just theirs, YaMa have come to use performance making as a way of exploring the ‘other side of the story’. Stories of ordinary habits, modes of preparation and anticipation that structure our everyday lives are taken out of their habitual environment and analysed within a studio, amongst an audience. By re-presenting these processes of transformation in a performance they aim to let the action recreate its own meaning. Their performance work does not focus on ‘who they are’, but rather ‘how they are doing this’.
Seeing the end in sight is crucial, as we ask the audience to experience the action taking place rather than the anticipation of a future event. We work with materials that determine the beginnings and endings of our performance work. Actions and processes, such as decay or preparation, define the narrative structure.
Our approach to finding material begins outside, spending time walking and talking around the area that we are based, interacting with the inhabitants of the place. Exploring the outside in order to find how we fit inside it.
We see each performance as a step of certainty, a moment of clarity, guiding us through an ongoing process of development and uncertainty.