Ashizawa Jin’s 2004 GRAPH column featured illustrations of actresses in one dream role of their choice, and one dream role Ashizawa had for them. Ayabuki’s was published in the January issue.

12 Acts of Dreams – Act 1: Ayabuki Mao

For the new year, the year of Takarazuka’s 90th anniversary, the directions from the editing department are to illustrate “roles the stars want to play”, and my suggestions for “roles I want the stars to play”. This is a challenge! Since I can’t make do with stage photos as reference the way I have until now. Whether it’s Japanese-style or Western-style plays, I have to put together the makeup, wigs, costumes and everything for the illustrations. Finally it’s the opening of Act 1. The star is Ayabuki Mao! This is the beginning of a pasisonate performance.

If you were choosing a theme song for Ayabuki Mao, what song would you pick?
Maybe ‘Beyond Dreams’, the theme song of Ludwig II, where I played Ludwig II in the junior performance (main cast: Aika Mire). Though the song is written to express Ludwig’s emotions, I think how the lyrics express that all humans are living holding onto their dreams really fits me how I am right now. At my high school graduation, on the tile I was supposed to write a message on I wrote “I want to give dreams to everyone!” At the time I wrote it because I was full of hopes of entering Takarazuka, but now what I want to express as Ayabuki Mao is “I want to give dreams to the audience!” Of course being able to enjoy performing on the Takarazuka stage is a dream as well, but foundationally I want to give dreams to the audience.

I loved your solid performance as Charles in A Tale of Two Cities, but did you make any new discoveries with that role?
Charles is surrounded by so many other people but acts in center stage a lot, so I discovered at that time how good it felt to be there and how nice that sensation was. I think this is also because I was playing the role of a noble, but I had to make sure I didn’t stress over the little things, and present myself grandly and firmly. That’s important when acting in center stage, and acting so confidently in cender stage also felt great. Up until now I’ve little by little been able to make roles more my own, but now I think I’m at the point where I’m finally able to breathe naturally as my character. By diving into the role, putting on a dignified attitude and taking a deep breath, I’m able to make a large-scale performance, and I feel like I’m able to perform anything I want now. By playing Charles I think I’ve made it a bit closer to that idea.

Now that you’ve reached where you are in your career, can you answer the challenge of any role that comes your way?
I hope that I’m completely prepared (laughs). Recently, with Rudolf (Elisabeth), Toyotomi Hideyori (A Flute Named Wind), and also Charles, I’ve been given a lot of characters of high rank, who are quiet rather than active. So I’d like to play a role that seems to bring some kind of loud noise with him, ‘thud’, ‘crash’, any noise is fine. I tend to get gentle songs in revues too, so I’d like to try a more intense song.

What was the reason you chose Ibaragi from Flower Legend of Ooeyama as the role you wanted to play?
I encountered this show while I was still in school, but I felt really drawn to its mature atmosphere. It’s a grand romantic story where the heroine Fujiko, even though she is loved by Watanabe-no-Tsuna, embraces her true love for the demon Ibaragi. Her determination in going to Ibaragi, despite the danger to herself, was thrilling to me. I’ve never been able to perform in a grand romantic show like that, so though finally getting the role of Charles, who even has a wedding ceremony, in A Tale of Two Cities, was very happy for me, I’ve been thinking recently would still like to challenge myself with a character who has an intense love encounter. It’s not like a heartfelt longing, but I just think I’d like to try performing that. Of course there are lots of other roles I thought of, but one of those is Ibaragi from Flower Legend of Ooeyama. Though he’s a demon, he has a human heart, and though he might look strong he actually has a very sensitive heart. That part of him is also appealing to me.

What would you say is most representative of Ayabuki Mao as a performer?
I’m an extremely stubborn human being (laughs). My convictions, or whatever, won’t change… I’m me and I’m right here! I have that side to me. You could put it critically and say I’m reluctant to shift myself, but I’m not really influenced either way by other people’s opinions or gossip. Even on stage, though I used to be told as a junior actress that I was wavery, but compared to that, I think recently I’m able to settle myself firmly while acting, so I feel like I’ve become more stable. More life experience, or my roots have grown stronger, maybe… I think my representative attribute might be how I do things my own way and how stubborn I am (laughs).

You get 15 minutes of showtime! What do you create to fill it?
Big musical numbers, singing and dancing and performing the lines by myself. I’d like to compile things together to completely fill the 15 minutes (laughs). I’d like to pick things from foreign musicals: of course from big hit shows, but I’d also like to pick songs from fun shows staged in little theatres and sing them for the first time in this country. Though naturally, if one of the Revue’s creators wrote something for me that would make me happiest of all (laughs).

What role did you struggle the most with getting into character for?
There are a lot, but Hans in Immortal Thorns was difficult, or perhaps rather, painful for me. He’s a drunk, and on top of that he has strong suicidal feelings, so I had to incorporate these attributes. I’m a positive sort of person, but back then if I had been pulled too far into Hans I think I might have become much more negative. If I had fallen in completely I might have lost myself as a person, but it was a role where I had to slip down to a certain point to be able to do it, so it was a struggle for me.

When have you had fun performing a role, and when have you felt that enjoyment onstage?
Though Rudolf was a difficult role, every day I felt the happiness of being able to live as Rudolf on the huge stage of the Grand Theatre. Recently there was Charles, of course. It was fun to stand onstage performing that role. Without even thinking about it, the words and gestures came out, and without even thinking about it I ended up in goosebumps, or crying, and when that transformation happened inside me I understood how fun it was. When I got into the wings and came back to my real self it was like “So what is this!?” If I tremble because I think I want to tremble, that’s acting. Becoming someone different to me, instead of that, that’s the real delight of performing, isn’t it.

When you performed a junior performance lead role, what about it provided the most sustenance to your growth?
Even if a junior performance is only one day, I still got to play a lead role, so that experience in itself gave me a lot of confidence. ‘Didn’t I perform in that difficult show, that really tough role the man cast does every day, didn’t I learn all those lines and songs?’ I think being able to think that due to that experience really pushed me to become who I am now.

How did it feel taking the whole-company picture for the 90th anniversary?¹
It might look like an unusual group to an outside observer, but it really made me think ‘This is Takarazuka!’ We’re split into the 5 troupes, so we never perform with all of these women gathered together in this huge theatre, right. It made me think ‘Takarazuka is really amazing!’ At the 80th anniversary I was only ken-1, so I was in the second-to-last row, but this time I’m in the third row from the front (laughs). I could feel the history of those 10 years.

The dream I want to entrust Ayabuki Mao with is Marcel Pagnol’s Marius.
Recently, Ayabuki has shown her growth in the arts, and I want to see her play the young man Marius in the masterpiece play Marius. It’s a romantic story of his passionate feelings for the sea, and his tender longing for his lover, Fanny. The setting is the melancholic port city, Marseilles. The show is full of emotion and human interest and displays the various patterns of human relationships. I feel that everything is now in order for Yumiko [Ayabuki] to explode onto the scene. In Takarazuka, Daichi Mao starred in Marius just after Bow Hall was opened, and the great Migiwa Natsuko also took on the role after her retirement. This play was also the source material for The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. Though the setting is quite different, the emotions and tears are all in the same places. Though now it’s one of the prime examples of classic theatre, masterpieces never lose their sparkle no matter the era.

1 – Ayabuki (as far as we can tell) can be seen in this small section of the whole-company photograph, which was published in the front of the January GRAPH.