Omnibus Performance Vol.1 (Review)

What if we were able to predict the future? How does it feel to awaken a forgotten memory? Is the future predetermined? Can rewriting the past bring happiness? These were some of the questions raised in four short VR plays presented at the Mashiro Small Theater last week under the title “Omnibus Performance Vol. 1.”

Mashiro, which means all-white in Japanese—a reference to the venue’s monochrome exterior—is a 50-seat virtual black box space in VRChat that has been hosting live events by (mostly) amateur groups since early 2024. Managed by めど(Meadow), a VR actor and VTuber from Japan, Mashiro produces live theatre, dance, role playing games and improvisation. It also assists newcomers in creating theatre work for VR platforms.

Kimi to Kakeru Mirai
(A future spent with you)

The first of the four pieces in Omnibus was Kimi to Kakeru Mirai (a future spent with you), written by Taisuke Amagasaki and directed by Mao. The play revolves around a couple, Takahiro and Haru, and their relationship with a new robot assistant called “Thirty,” set to replace their trusty ten-year-old android, An. Since An’s rental period is going to expire, the pair is invited to trial the newer model whose advanced features include—and this is the play’s main conceit—the ability to accurately predict the future.

When Thirty introduces himself to the couple, explaining that he was named after his model number 2030, and that he is a master prognosticator, An looks on in quiet dismay, forced to acknowledge that her time as house servant is up. This scene speaks to the fetishization of speed and newness in real-world tech cultures, where consumers (myself included) are locked into upgrade cycles with their phones, computers and other devices, despite many remaining usable far beyond their estimated renewal dates.

Thirty is different however. His technology presents a clean break with anything that has come before. His ability to foretell everything from future illnesses to correct career choices is unquestionably disruptive. He is a technological “singularity” of the kind that the development of artificial general intelligence represents for our own societies today. Thirty’s capabilities frighten Haru and she asks the android to give the couple some time to think before committing to the upgrade.

Gazing out the rear window of their apartment, which was a nice directorial touch, Haru notes quite poignantly that had it not been for the arrival of the “future” (the androids), they could have married earlier. Although she doesn’t say it, the inference is that they could have had human children rather than the two android “progeny” that they must now choose between. The arrival of An altered the couple’s trajectory in the name of a futurity that—at the time—they were willing to buy into. Thirty, however, is a step too far. Ultimately, the couple view his enhanced capabilities as a form of closure or stasis rather than potentiality.

Kimi to Kakeru Mirai suggests that love and understanding are born out of uncertainty and struggle, and that lessons learnt from “the fall” are possibly more valuable than the certainty that comes with prediction or replacement. Thus, the couple decides to keep the older android.

Neko no Shinzo
(Cat heart)

With a blend of subtlety and surrealism, the second play Neko no Shinzo (cat heart) written and directed by Yuri Kuroi, interweaves themes of death, memory and the enduring effects of kindness. The play opens with a Buddhist chant to the dead (shomyo) against the sound of breaking waves. A young man named Kakeru, descends a concrete staircase to an abandoned seaside coffee shop. He is at wit’s end and delivers a monologue railing at the company he was once employed at and bemoaning his life as a self-proclaimed NEET. His speech is interrupted by the arrival of a spirit named Reito who invites him inside the cafe for a chat. She explains that she knew Kakeru from her high school days and that he was kind to her, even though she died young. Kakeru has no recollection of this, so Reito serves as an aide-mémoire.

Later, in a scene at the foot of a Buddhist temple, we see Reito being granted her wish to meet Kakeru by a woman called Beru. Beru is referred to as a majo (witch), however, given the play’s emphasis on religious rites and settings, she seems closer to an itako or spiritual medium in Japan’s Buddhist tradition. In exchange for meeting Kakeru, Reito must retrieve a heart that Beru somehow leant to an old woman some ten years prior. The old woman, who lives in an a nearby machiya (traditional town house), borrowed the heart in the hope of saving her now deceased grandchild. In an emotional exchange, the old woman, who we only hear but never see, reveals her regret and gives back the heart.

In the final scene, Reito returns to the cafe to rekindle Kakeru’s memory of how he helped her through a bullying ordeal in high school. Their reminiscence is disturbed by the arrival of the play’s titular cat. As with the old woman, we never see the cat but only hear its meow. Kakeru’s parting thought is that the heart perhaps belonged to him.

Neko no Shinzo is a VR theatre piece that isn’t afraid to embrace silence and minimalism. The 3D graphic structure of VR tends towards visual spectacle and technical trickery, which can be imaginative and illuminating when applied with critical distance or when trying to elicit new audience experiences, but in this configuration, where the world is a 3D graphic rendition of an end-on proscenium arch theatre, visual gimmicks often fall flat and feel awkward. The paired down settings in Neko no Shinzo, coupled with the rhythmic ebb of the waves, the chorus of late summer cicadas, and the Buddhist chants underscored the fragmented memories and unresolved emotions of the characters, and helped carry the play’s reflections on transience and the lingering of the past. I particularly liked the use of acousmatic presence in this piece. The disembodied voices of the old woman and the cat broke the visual unity of representation that tends to dominate VR theatre design and called on the audience to use its imagination.

Jeiru Torein
(Jail train)

The third play, Jeiru Torein (jail train), penned by Chizuru Nago, and directed by Mashiro’s めど(Meadow), is a series of dialogues between Valentine, Shirley and a newcomer; three characters trapped in a mysterious retro-designed train. The world design for this piece was the most visually sophisticated of the four pieces, drawing on anime culture—perhaps with a nod to Reiji Matsumoto’s Galaxy Express 999. The crepuscular train carriage, and the rhythmic hum of its wheels, instilled intrigue and momentum, on top of which a struggle between fatalism and free will could play out. Over the course of the play’s four scenes, we learn that the train is a type of purgatory for lost souls, where those trapped are on a long and slow journey of purification, filled with little more than stultifying repetition.

The play centers on the newcomer’s hundredth cycle, marked by the repetition of a particular interaction with Valentine and Shirley. Valentine, the train’s self-proclaimed manager, explains to the newcomer why the only source of light in the train is the flickering constellation of stars outside the windows: to prevent reincarnation. Purgatory it seems, in this lose adaptation of Buddhist tenets, must be fully detached from past and future for atonement to function. At least that is the system at work on the jail train.

However, Shirley, a long-long-term resident of the train (1000 years) who possesses the ability to read people’s minds, reveals the newcomer’s past life as a soldier involved in torturing prisoners for information. Valentine also shows a subversive streak, revealing a hidden desire to manipulate the system of cycles by helping the newcomer to be reincarnated.

While Shirley and Valentine discuss the newcomer’s destiny, the unchanging nature of fate, and Valentine’s attempt to alter it, the newcomer discloses her choice to remain on the train, as she finds the repetitive routine peaceful. It is at this point that the irony of the characters’ name choices comes into focus. Shirley Valentine is the title of a mid-1980s play by English dramatist Willy Russell about a working-class woman from Liverpool who takes a trip to Greece and unlocks a world of new opportunities. She refuses to go back to her old life and cancels the return flight.

Despite Jeiru Torein’s narrative jumps and generous helpings of whimsy, which can be forgiven since the play tries to pack a thousand years of purgatory into just fifteen minutes, I read the piece as an ecological allegory about effecting incremental change within a cycle of oppression, rather than attempting to blow a hole in the entire edifice. The train lost in space works as a metaphor for Earth, the pale blue dot spinning in airy nothing, and purgatory as the cycles of consumption that humans engage in at the cost of environmental catastrophe. The question the play asks is how to break out of this jail train without completely derailing it. The answer it seems to arrive at is patience and determination. While that may work in the ethereal realm of reincarnation, back on planet Earth the stakes for survival are increasing year on year.

Sen no Kaze ni Natte
(Become a thousand winds)

The final piece in this omnibus was Sen no Kaze ni Natte (become a thousand winds) written by Toshikuni Koganei of the Yokohama Mugi no Kai theatre company, and directed byせびる(Sebiru). The play homes in on the preparations for a family’s scattering of ashes ceremony at sea for the recently deceased mother. The play’s title is a reference to the popular Japanese song of the same name released by Arai Mitsuru in 2006, which itself is an adaptation of a 1934 poem purportedly written by Kansas native, Clare Harner, entitled “Do not stand at my grave and weep.”

The play opens with the arrival of a funeral director at the family’s home. He has come to finalize details of the ceremony with the father and his two grown-up children. The father has second thoughts about attending the service, but his daughter pleads with him to stick to the plan, if nothing else but to honor his late wife’s will.

There is a mix of reasons behind the father’s hesitation and one of them is money. “Why does it cost so much even after you die?” he asks mid-way through the piece. The two children take a different tack, railing against the father’s dire finances, and the dilapidated state of the modest family home. The father bemoans his reliance on a small state pension and the rising cost of living, which spirals into a fiery debate about the cost-effectiveness of different burial options: traditional family grave; columbarium: scattering ashes: or burying the body in the back garden!

With undertones of Kuo Pao Kun’s seminal play, The Coffin is Too Big for the Hole (1984), and its dissection of Singaporean state power against shifting family values, Sen No Kaze Ni Natte reflects the changing landscape of funeral practices in Japan against the backdrop to this is Japan’s gloomy economic outlook. Japan’s aging population, low birthrate, post-pandemic inflation and stagnating wages feed into this social drama. 

The play also gives a realistic portrayal of the different ways family members cope with grief, ranging from practical preparations to emotional expression. While there are disagreements, there is ultimately an undercurrent of acceptance and even reconciliation. When the son sings a verse of the play’s title song, the father breaks down and begins the long process of mourning his departed wife.

Throughout the four plays, audience members could be heard snapping photos of standout scenes. Since our mics were muted, the rhythmic feedback of camera shutter sounds was the only audible trace of audience presence. Photography is generally accepted in amateur VR theatre, partly for PR purposes, but partly also because it helps create community cohesion. After the show, the audience gathered outside the venue to talk to the cast and crew, take photos, and exchange information about new groups and events. The mood was very positive. This short form “scratch night” format works well for VR performance. There’s a limit to how long audiences are willing to wear VR headsets, and there’s just something exciting about discovering new work. I’m already looking forward to Omnibus Vol.2!  

If you’d like to see Omnibus Performance Vol.1, a second showing will be held onMarch 2^nd 2025. For more information, see the Mashiro Small Theater website.

Further information

• These notes are based on a viewing of Omnibus Performance Vol.1 that took place on 23 February 2025.
• Mashiro Small Theater website: https://mashirotheater.com/
• めど(Meadow), a VR actor and Vtuber profile page: https://lit.link/en/meadow
• Watch the archive video of Omnibus Performance Vol. 1 on YouTube.
• VRChat: https://hello.vrchat.com/