浮云杜鹃地 (1978)

This play, loosely based on Jonathan Swift's satire, was performed at the Mickery by the Japanese theatre group Tenjosajiki (meaning the highest part of the theatre or the gods), founded by Shuji Terayama, a writer playwright, poet and filmmaker. The main characters in the play are servants: a butler, a cook, footman, groom, house-steward, porter, chambermaid, housekeeper and governess. A strange mechanism, the Saint-Master Machine, appears on stage, with the power to change a servant into a master. There is a rumor that the real master is actually disguised among the servants. When the servants try to kill their absent master, their hatred creates a hellish atmosphere. The tragedy is not the absence of the Master, but the servants' need for one.