"I believe that the theater should be interesting at first sight. If it can be particularly intriguing or fun, then it's worthwhile." This is Takeshi Kawamura--playwright, director, actor and founding member of Daisan Erotica, now entering its sixteenth year on the popular and financial fringe of Tokyo. Since 1980 the group has performed two or three new works a year, and toured the U.S., Australia, Germany, Canada and Lithuania, as well as annual treks around Japan. Unconventional performance spaces have become one of the troupe's trademarks--apart from the Furansu-za, previous Daisan Erotica productions have taken place on a barge floating in a Yokohama canal, and a boxing ring built in a live music house. In shows like the cyber-epic Nippon Wars, which follows the secret training of telepathic androids and human assassins, and A Man Called MACBETH (Shakespeare transplanted among the yakuza of Kabukicho), Kawamura has built a reputation as a cultural sponge, able to soak up diverse influences and squeeze them out transformed for confrontational consumption.

Tokyo Trauma, which premiered at the International Festival of Performing Arts last September, was typical, dumping the Japanese educational experience into a cultural blender and hitting the puree button. Three high school boys undergo a comic-absurd trial by psycho-history--berated by Freud for eating American fast food, beaten up by politicians in a tag wrestling match, they end up participating in a bizarre "genocide Olympics," the legacy of Nanking, Hiroshima and Auschwitz. The audience is asked to complete an exam paper filled with surreal questions: "Name three chemical weapons currently in use." "In 50 characters or less, describe modern theater under the heading Theater and Massacre." "I am a constant critic of the Japanese people," says Kawamura, "because I don't believe that the Japanese think very much about anything. I want to create a theater which scares people, like a Barnum and Bailey freak show."

The angry urgency of Daisan Erotica's style is deeply theatrical, but each production draws on a wide range of media: television, film, video, rock. The soundtrack is part of the rehearsal process from the very beginning: original music, well known songs, sampled voices and sound effects unify each production. "I think a lot of actors' reaction to sound," says Kawamura. "I don't care about the psychological feeling or emotional reaction--I want to see how the bodies react."

If rich individual performances are what you look for in theater, then Daisan Erotica is not where you will find them. You can't empathize with characters; Kawamura's lead actors, like the wiry Hiroyuki Ebihara, sometimes appear to be no more than pawns in a lavish ritual, whose exact significance is not always clear.

It's appropriate then that, for his latest venture, Kawamura has virtually abandoned actors altogether. Frankenstein Bible is a new show, directed and written by Kawamura for the 350-year old Yuki-za marionette company, combining dolls (from quarter- to life-size) with live actors. "A good actor for me is one who has no memories about previous productions," Kawamura says. I don't want them to dwell on their careers, characters, or experiences. I want them to be blank slates: that is a wonderful actor. The battle between the dolls and me has begun."