FUKAI JUNKO Produce "Mr. Kim Yusu" @ Komaba Agora Theater

FUKAI Junko Produce "Mr. Kim Yusu" @Komaba Agora Theater I watched the play. It is a one-man show with semi-autobiographical content by Kim Yusu, an actor belonging to FUKAIPRODUCE Hagoromo. The official website credits listed Junko Fukai as producer and Ryo Ikeda (Yu-mei) as planning collaborator, but the script was written and directed by Ryo Ikeda based on interviews with Kim Yusu and Junko Fukai, as well as autobiographical recollections written by Kim Yusu himself, incorporating fiction. The style of mixing actual events with fiction felt very similar to Yu-mei's works.
That said, since Yu-mei often uses Ryo Ikeda himself or his family as subjects, it felt like a litmus test for what might be created if such a fusion of documentary and fiction were expanded to other people, which was also interesting*1.
Although I wrote at the beginning that it is a "one-man show with semi-autobiographical content by Kim Yusu," what is interesting about this work is that it does not follow the format of Kim Yusu recalling or acting out his own life. Instead, it sets up another character with a "me" perspective besides Kim Yusu, and by making Kim Yusu his former classmate from childhood, it depicts the old Kim Yusu from the outside.
Then, triggered by Kim Yusu's recent eccentric behavior of visiting a sex parlor, doing nothing but holding hands, and handing over letters, the two reunite. The structure is quite irregular for what one would call an "autobiographical one-man show," as the actor "Kim Yusu" plays both roles from that point on.
What is interesting in terms of direction is that there are two mannequins on stage in addition to the performer (Kim Yusu), and all characters other than the two are represented by them. Furthermore, the dialogue between Kim Yusu and "me" is performed by one actor playing two roles using the mannequins, and during the acting, he puts a baseball cap on the mannequin or wears it himself, and the characters switch with the movement of the hat. In other words, the person wearing the hat is always Kim Yusu, and the mechanism is that when the hat moves, the characters switch.

*1: I don't follow all of Yu-mei's works, so there might be works with similar themes to this one. There is no doubt that Ryo Ikeda is influenced by Hideito Iwai, as Iwai's "Wareware no Moromoro" is a performance with exactly similar themes. That work also has an original source, which also appears in the movie "Maku ga Agaru".