Ōta Shōgo's The Water Station

How do we maintain dignity in face of adversity?

Movement, sound, and silence paint a vivid journey of migration and the act of leaving home, not as a choice, but in desperation.

The Water Station is a film adaptation by playwright, director, and NYU Abu Dhabi professor Abhishek Majumdar of a play by Japanese playwright Ōta Shōgo, written in 1981. It is the second part of a three part trilogy dedicated to silence including Majumdar’s NYU Abu Dhabi Spring 2021 course Silence as its prequel and his forthcoming staged play, 9 Kinds of Silence as its sequel. It is about our experience of the world and how it is shaped by what we have to leave behind, who we can leave with, and what happens when we meet others in our journeys.

Inspired by Ōta Shōgo’s experiences as a child, walking long distances with other refugees as his family migrated from China to Japan the piece foregrounds ‘slowness’ and ‘quietude’, having no spoken words, and was crafted through movement, sound, and silence across space and landscape. Movement sequences for this adaptation were developed using techniques of the Sanskrit theater form Kutiyattam as a natural choice to drive an entire language of slowness. Its creative development honored Ōta Shōgo’s original form of a devised performance text which was open to improvisation and development in partnership with the student actors and was rehearsed as a play before being captured as a feature film. This openness allowed the diverse cast of NYUAD Students from across the world to bring their own experience with international forms of theater and film to the piece.

The NYUAD Theater program is proud to present its first student production since the Covid-19 pandemic in collaboration with the NYUAD Film and Music Programs and creative professionals Fowzia Fathima (Director of Photography), Suresh Kaliyath (Movement Director), Arthur De Oliveira (Assistant Director), Abhi Tambe (Music and Sound Composer), and Vandana Menon (Dramaturg and Editor).