A memorable journey with Jemma Kahn
SASSY and saucy as ever in In Bocca al Lupo, Jemma Kahn (pictured) takes her audience on a rich journey both visual and emotional using the ancient art of kamishibai (a Japanese story-telling technique from the 12th century).
In her two previous shows in this genre, Kahn presented a series of short stories which had little or nothing to do with her personally; this time it is very different as she shares her experiences of life as a young adult, and the result is a painfully honest, wryly amusing perspective on the aspirations and disappointments of a twenty-something year-old woman finding her identity.
In typically unorthodox fashion she eschews the usual beginning-and-end approach to her narrative, emphasising that it could start anywhere and end anywhere.
So it starts with a festive outing in a pine forest somewhere in Japan and ends with her donning a gleaming kimono – and there is a great deal of action between these two sequences.
That said, Kahn is too much of an artist to be random or casual about structure; references to her late grandmother “frame” the show, the latter one explaining its title.
When Kahn was about to embark on her first kamishibai show after two extended adventures (one in Japan, the second in Ireland), the old lady wished her luck with the Italian phrase, in bocca al lupo (equivalent to ‘break a leg’).
From the outset she uses the plural “we” to include the audience in her personal odyssey, and intense eye-contact ensures that complicity between herself and the spectators is unbroken.
The year is 2008, and after finishing her education she takes the route of teaching English overseas – in Japan, near Hiroshima. Culture shock is harrowing and hilarious, conveyed with the narrative brilliance that is Kahn’s hallmark.
Neutrally costumed to distract attention as little as possible from the four story boxes that contain sequence after sequence of cardboard panels depicting the tale she has to tell, Kahn is almost unassertive as she slots appropriate images into the boxes, her timing flawless.
Some of the drawings (her own artwork) are beautiful in their simplicity, like sketches of the Emerald Isle when the action moves to Ireland; some are close to pornography with their explicit sexuality. All are riveting like the show as a whole, with variety introduced by occasional exchanges between Kahn and her distant family when the spotlight shifts from the boxes to the narrator, marking times of family crisis.
Charl Johan Lingenfelder’s sound design is a subtle but essential element in ambience-enhancement, and the magnificent garment Kahn puts on in the finale (designed by Ella Buter) rounds off In Bocca… stylishly.
This is kamishibai with a difference, and very rewarding.