This talk, featuring Mizu Natsuki, Ayabuki Mao, and Otozuki Kei, was recorded late in the Takarazuka run of the 2007 Snow Troupe Elisabeth and published in the August 2007 issue of GRAPH.
lost-in-the-land-of-stories kindly provided the translation excerpts used when they quote the show.
Talk DX – Elisabeth
Participants: Mizu Natsuki, Ayabuki Mao, Otozuki Kei
Mizu: On opening day, I didn’t think personally that I was that nervous, but afterwards people who had been watching said “You were nervous, weren’t you.” (laughs)
Ayabuki: I got that too (laughs).
Mizu: (laughs) During the closing address I messed up my words a bit so I guess I really was nervous (laughs).
Otozuki: (laughs) I was nervous on opening day too.
Mizu: Right, since Lucheni (Otozuki) enters immediately after the curtain goes up.
Otozuki: Yes. I could feel a lot of tension from the audience this time.
Mizu: It wasn’t just the performers but the audience who were nervous, huh (laughs).
Ayabuki: That might be true (laughs).
Otozuki: But, Yumiko-san (Ayabuki), this is your third time performing in Elisabeth, so I would have thought you weren’t nervous?
Ayabuki: No~, naturally I was nervous on opening day. When the curtain opened and I was on standby behind the coffin set, I was nervous but I also felt the familiar atmosphere of being onstage. “Oh, this is the same kind of nervousness I felt before,” I thought.
Mizu: I see.
Ayabuki: It was kind of a strange feeling (laughs).
Otozuki: (laughs) What is it like being on standby behind the coffins? Can you not see the audience at all?
Ayabuki: You can see a little past the edge of the set.
Mizu: Oh, you can see… After about a week had passed from opening day I was able to relax a little bit. Closer to opening, sometimes in the acting scenes all I could see was my acting partner…well, basically, Tod (Mizu) can only see Sisi (Shirahane Yuri) anyway (laughs).
Otozuki: Wow~! (laughs)
Ayabuki: (laughs)
Mizu: In the milk scene and the cafe scene and such, the more I looked the more I’d discover in the movements of the Black Angels and the townspeople, so that’s really fun.
Ayabuki: I was also able to mostly relax once it was around a week in. I think the ensemble also started feeling more relaxed around then as well.
Mizu: That’s right. It must be that they got to the point where they could listen better to the people around them.
Otozuki: That’s right.
Mizu: Kimu (Otozuki), how about you? Today, when I heard you delivering your lines, I felt like ‘she’s really enjoying performing this’, but…
Otozuki: ‘I’m finally getting there’, is the feeling. During rehearsals, I couldn’t imagine getting to the point where I could have fun with the performance.
Ayabuki: I often watch the milk scene from the entrance of the side stage, thinking the whole time ‘Kimu’s really enjoying this, isn’t she…’ (laughs).
Otozuki: Recently, in that scene, when we all are on the Silver Bridge, I’ve been looking towards the gathered Black Angels a lot. But when I do that it means that all I’m showing to the audience is my back, so recently I’ve been trying to pay attention so I don’t do that.
Ayabuki: Tod has a ton of different outfits, doesn’t he. It’s like a shichihenge [a kabuki term describing a series of rapid costume changes]. All his outfits are coordinated for T. P. O. [Time, Place, Occasion].
Otozuki: T. P. O.! (laughs)
Mizu: Unlike Lucheni (laughs). I have too many killer outfits, I’m sorry (laughs).
Otozuki: Lucheni just has that horizontal striped shirt… (laughs)
Ayabuki: (laughs)
Mizu: (laughs) Franz (Ayabuki) has a lot of clothes too, right.
Ayabuki: Yes, though they’re mainly uniforms.
Mizu: A uniform line?
Ayabuki, Otozuki: (laughs)
Mizu: I love all of Tod’s outfits, but in particular, I like the one from where he sings ‘Die Schatten werden länger’ with Rudolf (Ouki Kaname) the best. It’s simple, but has subtle accents, and I just love it (laughs).
Otozuki: You sound like a clothing store salesperson (laughs).
Ayabuki: (laughs)
Otozuki: You have a mark like a tattoo on your right hand.
Mizu: Right.
Ayabuki: Chika-san (Mizu), you were the one to first bring up that idea, right.
Mizu: Yeah. I wanted some kind of accessory that felt as inhuman as possible, so I was trying to think up something. At first I was thinking of putting a cross tattoo or something like that on my chest, but I couldn’t really find anything good. So just as I was wracking my brains over what to do I thought ‘Hang on, what about what Sakurano Ayane-chan did!’
Ayabuki: Black Lizard!
Otozuki: Oh!
Mizu: I remembered the lizard Ayane-chan had on her back when she played The Black Lizard in Akechi Kogorou Casefiles: The Black Lizard. Then I thought it might be interesting to reflect the jagged design elements from Tod’s costumes in this production on my hand, so I brought it up to the designers and they were kind enough to agree with me.
Otozuki: Do you take the decoration off when you’re washing your face to change your makeup between the first and second performances?
Mizu: I leave it on. So I try to keep it from getting wet, which means I’m washing my face with just my right hand that doesn’t have the marking (laughs).
Ayabuki: I’m always watching Chika-san thinking ‘if you wanted it I could loan you my left hand’ but that wouldn’t really… (laughs)
Mizu, Otozuki: (laughs)
Mizu: In the mirror scene, you know, before I enter onto the Silver Bridge, when I’m on standby in the orchestra pit, I always watch Yumiko on stage.
Ayabuki, Otozuki: Oh~
Mizu: Today I thought ‘maybe I’ll make eye contact with Yumiko!’, but… (laughs)
Ayabuki: Oh! I didn’t notice at all. (laughs)
Mizu: When you looked down a little bit I thought ‘could it be!?’ but then you glanced to the side.
Ayabuki: When I was singing ‘But if that means losing you…’?
Mizu: Right…
Otozuki: That’s so sad…
Mizu, Ayabuki: (laughs)
Mizu: But then I thought ‘that’s right, Yumiko was only looking away because she was caught up in acting…’ Oh, say, today, actually, I thought instead of looking only at Yumiko I’d look at Tonami (Shirahane) too. But I couldn’t see her from where I was for my standby.
Otozuki: Maybe one of these days the audience will spot Tod straining to see Sisi from the orchestra pit (laughs).
Mizu, Ayabuki: (laugh)
Ayabuki: I think Sisi is a very lonely person, but Franz is quite a lonely person as well.
Mizu: Like “I’m lonely too, dammit!”? (laughs)
Ayabuki, Otozuki: (laugh)
Ayabuki: While he’s of course surrounded by government bureaucrats who flatter him, he can’t come to an understanding with the one woman he loves… “I’m so lonely,” I’ll think.
Mizu: That’s right. In the end, the only thing that can heal loneliness is loving and being loved in return.
Ayabuki: Yes. But in Franz’s case it’s only a one-way street situation.
Mizu: Tod is in the same boat there!
Otozuki: Everyone’s so lonely (laughs).
Ayabuki: It’s turned into the loneliness Olympics (laughs). With Franz, his feelings of loneliness increases with each scene he appears in. In the scene in the hall of mirrors, when Franz accepts Sisi’s conditions and Sisi replies ‘[I] would be glad to share this path with you, Your Majesty’ for just a moment he’s excited and happy, but right after that there’s ‘however, my life belongs to me’, so…
Mizu: It’s like ‘slam!’ in his face (laughs)
Otozuki: His happiness only lasted for an instant… (laughs)
Ayabuki: I think Franz is a really big-hearted person to still accept Sisi even so. He must love Sisi really deeply; I feel that every day.
Mizu: It’s unrequited love.
Otozuki: Franz is a really great person, I think.
Mizu: He’s so accepting.
Ayabuki and Otozuki: Right~
Mizu: As for that otokoyaku ensemble dance in the finale, I’d always watched it from the audience and thought ‘that’s so nice…’, but it’s great in a different way to actually dance it.
Ayabuki: Yeah.
Otozuki: It feels like you’re saying ‘this is what it means to be an otokoyaku!’
Mizu and Ayabuki: Totally!
Ayabuki: I feel like in that scene we’re really being carried by the offstage female chorus.
Otozuki: The one singing the solo bit in the middle is Keiko-san (Miho Keiko), isn’t it.
Mizu: Yeah. Apparently that solo wasn’t in the original production, so they added it in the Star Troupe version.
Otozuki: It wasn’t there from the very beginning?
Ayabuki: That’s right.
Otozuki: Recently I’m finally able to listen properly to Keiko-san’s solo while I’m dancing. Before now I wasn’t able to relax that much.
Mizu: Ah, I get that, I get that.
Ayabuki: That tango-styled duet dance you and Tonami have is so impressive, Chika-san.
Mizu: Really? When I’m dancing it, it seems to go by in a flash.
Ayabuki: Not at all.
Mizu: Thank you. To tell you the truth, I’m always a bit nervous after the end of that dance, when I go across the Silver Bridge (laughs).
Otozuki: Really?
Mizu: Yeah. I never feel nervous when I cross the Silver Bridge usually, so maybe it’s something to do with the lights. I want to ‘make friends with the Silver Bridge’ as soon as possible, so I can live up to the vision the directors and choreographers have (laughs).
Ayabuki and Otozuki: (laugh)
Otozuki: Starting with this production, Chika-san is the most senior person in the main dressing room, right?
Mizu: Right. The makeup tables are set up by year level, so as most senior I’m right at the end of the main dressing room. And then Kimu’s makeup spot is also moving to the senior actress zone starting with this production, right?
Otozuki: Yes. It’s sort of a strange feeling to be sitting myself where all my seniors have been before.
Mizu: I’m enjoying being able to constantly watch everyone else in the troupe from the end of the dressing room.
Ayabuki: My makeup table is near Chika-san’s, too, so I can see everyone from there.
Mizu: Do you look at the junior actresses and think ‘there was a time when I was like that, too…’? (laughs)
Ayabuki: Yes. When I look at all the junior actresses it really makes me think ‘having classmates is so nice!’ Right now I’ve only just returned to Snow Troupe, so I’m people-watching. Kimu, you sing in the dressing room a lot, don’t you (laughs).
Otozuki: Huh!? Hang on now (laughs).
Ayabuki: Have you always been like that?
Otozuki: I never noticed… (laughs)
Mizu: (laughs) The whole intermission between act 1 and act 2, all you’re thinking about is the adlib when you go out with the camera to start act 2, aren’t you (laughs).
Otozuki: I’m talking to myself as I think (laughs).
Ayabuki: (laughs) The membership of Snow Troupe has changed a lot since I was last in it, but the general atmosphere of the dressing room hasn’t changed a bit.
Mizu: There aren’t many members left from when you were in Snow Troupe before, right, Yumiko?
Ayabuki: That’s right. In the main dressing room it’s just Yurika (Shiho) and Amase (Izuru).
Mizu: Is that all… Those two are doing a lot to look after me in the dressing room these days. Kayo (Yurika Shiho), Kaguya-chan (Morisaki Kaguya), and Koma (Saou Kurama) help maintain my wig, and Amase gives me massages (laughs).
Otozuki: You’re getting real luxury treatment (laughs).
Mizu: It’s thanks to everyone that I’m where I am today!
Ayabuki and Otozuki: (laugh)