This work is a one-person stage adaptation of Atsushi Nakajima’s “The Moon Over the Mountain,” a classic included in high-school textbooks. Accompanied by musician Yuki Nakagawa’s cello performance, the play portrays a man’s feelings of loneliness and longing after his transformation into a tiger. 

Having already been performed in a wide variety of locations, this iteration of “The Moon Over the Mountain” for the Toyooka Theater Festival will be presented in Shinonsen Town. 

Did the protagonist Li Zheng willingly abandon his humanity, or did he ultimately want to remain human? While I hope that Li Zheng returns safely, I also wonder what it would be like to join him and explore the unknown. Perhaps life as a beast, in a world where language, thought, and philosophy do not exist, is also free of the confusion and suffering that comes with being human. 

This work’s appeal is in its ambiguity, where the comfort and discomfort of being human coexist. This play’s ambiguity allows me to experience disorientation and conflict each time I perform, and that is one of the reasons I continue to stage it.