Reading Workshop «Les Pleureuses»
Kumiko Ueda’s Reading Workshop was held at Minato Commons (formerly Mita Library) from September 2024 to January 2025 as part of a preliminary program leading up to the opening of the Minato City Arts Center.
Here is an overview of the six workshop sessions.
Day 1: Reading Les Pleureuses
September 21, 2024
The workshop began with a gathering of general participants selected through an open call, Kumiko Ueda, and Chiaki Soma from Arts Commons Tokyo, the project’s organizer.
Instead of traditional self-introductions, each participant shared an item they were wearing that day, easing the initial tension as they spoke about the meaning and personal significance of their choices.
Copies of Kumiko Ueda’s unpublished play Les Pleureuses were distributed.
Inspired by the story of a devout Muslim mother left behind in a desert town in Iraq — a story Ueda heard from an exiled individual she met in France — the play presents a dialogue between two women, one from Asia and one from the Arab world.
Ueda wrote this piece out of a desire to introduce this mother figure to Japanese women.
Forming a circle, participants paired up and took turns reading the lines of the two women.
Other than Ueda herself, no one knew where the story was headed.
Both experienced and first-time performers from a wide range of generations immersed themselves in the play. By the time they reached the end, they had gone well past the scheduled closing time.
A collective sigh of relief and a pleasant sense of fatigue closed the first day, filled with anticipation for what was to come.
Day 2: Exploring the History of Theater and Corporeality
October 13, 2024
The second day opened with participants sharing their impressions from Day 1.
Feedback from the post-session survey included strong feelings of empathy for the two women of different cultures, curiosity about their historical contexts, and diverse reflections on the experience of collectively reading a play.
Joining online from Düsseldorf, Kumiko Ueda shared short video excerpts: footage of real-life professional mourners (“pleureuses”) and rehearsal scenes from Les Pleureuses in France.
Following this, Yoshiyuki Yokoyama — a scholar of Western performance theory and a member of the literary department at SPAC (Shizuoka Performing Arts Center) — delivered a lecture.
He explained how, in ancient times, performance was rooted in spontaneous songs and dances.
However, as political society came to prioritize rational speech, emotional and ecstatic expressions were relegated to “barbaric customs” of women and non-Western peoples. Over time, especially after the 18th century, this rationalist, male-centered, logocentric approach deeply infiltrated the world of theater.
In the subsequent Q&A session, participants discussed the importance and challenges of restoring embodied, non-verbal forms of expression in contemporary performance.
Day 3: Sharing Experiences of “Mothering” and Female Embodiment
November 10, 2024
Guest speaker Yuko Nakamura — filmmaker and author — led this session.
Drawing from her book Mothering: Caring for Others Beyond Gender (Shueisha), Nakamura spoke about how her experiences of pregnancy and childbirth led her to articulate the often-invisible aspects of women’s lives, proposing “mothering” as a broader act of caring for others, beyond biological or gendered definitions.
Each participant shared their personal reflections on embodiment and what the concept of “mothering” evoked for them: memories of childbirth, the choice not to have children, acts of nurturing received from or given to mothers, and the social expectations placed upon women.
Ueda, joining from Paris, responded to each testimony with thoughtful comments.
In closing, Nakamura emphasized that “maternal instincts” and “motherhood” have often been imposed on women in ways disconnected from their lived realities.
She explained her choice to reclaim and expand the term “mothering,” and stressed the importance of countering anti-natalist ideologies with hope for human and societal transformation.
Day 4: Reading Lysistrata
December 8, 2024
Participants read a digest version of Aristophanes’ ancient Greek comedy Lysistrata (translated by Masahiko Sato), where women stage a sex strike to demand the end of war waged by men.
Gathered again in a circle, they spent two hours reading the play before engaging in a lively discussion.
Comments ranged from reflections on the historical association between masculinity and violence, to the observation that not all men are warlike and that it would be simplistic to dichotomize men and women.
Some participants expressed interest in hearing male perspectives as well.
Day 5: Listening to the Body / Breaking Free from the Script
December 22, 2024
Participants arrived dressed for physical movement.
The venue — the “Sandy Beach” space at Minato Commons — resembled the desert where the two women in Les Pleureuses meet.
Shoes were removed to step onto the “sand,” and participants, in pairs, read parts of the script aloud before presenting short scenes.
Next, everyone took part in a physical workshop led by artist Mikiko Kawamura.
They explored sensations through exercises: scratching invisible surfaces, feeling rubber balls bouncing inside their bodies, expelling emotions physically.
Prompted by Kawamura’s guidance, participants tuned into their internal and external bodily worlds.
Building on this awareness, they paired up again to perform scenes, now adding movement.
Many remarked how simple actions — standing up, touching a cheek, locking eyes — evoked emotions they hadn’t felt when reading seated.
Finally, they closed their scripts entirely and improvised the same scenes in their own words.
This resulted in bursts of laughter, moments of profound emotion, and a new kind of vitality that filled the space, bringing the fifth session to an exuberant close.
Day 6: Performing Les Pleureuses Together
January 12, 2025
The final day arrived.
As a warm-up, participants formed lines in groups and mimicked the gestures of the person ahead of them.
Then, they returned to Les Pleureuses, but this time, they performed the play from beginning to end with movement.
Each participant was assigned one of the four characters (the Arab woman, the Asian woman, the Arab woman’s son, or the Asian woman’s daughter), and multiple participants embodied the same character, echoing each other’s gestures.
When an Arab woman offered a water flask, several Arab women followed suit.
When an Asian woman wept, many Asian women wept alongside her.
Carried by the many bodies and voices of the performers, the story came to a close.
What is theater?
What is womanhood?
What is the body?
What is a script?
Through half a year of dialogue and exploration, the story of Les Pleureuses culminated in thunderous applause — from the performers, and from the audience within themselves.
