How we work
The terms, before you have to ask for them.
Commissioning cultural work across a border usually fails on the unglamorous parts: lead time, rights, who pays for freight, and who is actually standing in the room on the night. So here they are, first rather than last.
The sequence
- 01
Brief
Tell us the date, the room, the audience, and the budget range. A rough version is fine. We will tell you within a few days whether it is reachable — and if it is not, we will say so instead of taking a deposit and finding out later.
- From you
- The date, the venue, the audience, a budget range
- From us
- A go / no-go, in writing, with the reason
- 02
Proposal and quote
A defined scope with the programme, the crew, the technical requirements, and a schedule that works backwards from your date. Our fee is separated from pass-through costs so you can see which is which.
- From you
- Venue drawings, power and rigging constraints, house rules
- From us
- Scope, schedule, quote, and a first technical rider
- 03
Contract and rights
Settled before work starts: who owns the staging design, who may use the footage and photographs, and what second use is permitted. We do not leave rights vague and sort them out afterwards.
- From you
- Your standard terms, if you have them
- From us
- A rights schedule in plain English
- 04
Build and rehearsal
Devices are built and tested in Kyoto before anything ships. Performers rehearse to the running order you approved. You get progress at agreed points, not only at the end.
- From you
- Sign-off at the agreed points
- From us
- Built devices, rehearsed programme, final rider
- 05
On site
We travel with the piece. Load-in, technical rehearsal, and the performance itself are run by the people who designed it — not handed to a local crew with a document.
- From you
- Local crew, venue access, and the local hires we agreed
- From us
- Direction, operation, and a working performance
- 06
After
Documentation of what was built, so a repeat run does not start from zero. If the piece becomes resident, we hand over the operating instructions rather than keeping you dependent.
- From you
- Feedback, and the date of the next one if there is one
- From us
- Documentation, footage, and an operating manual
The specifics
- Lead time
- Performer scheduling and visas are the long pole, not the production. As a rough guide: a small piece needs a few months, a large one considerably longer. Tell us the date and we will be specific rather than optimistic.
- Language
- English or Japanese throughout — briefs, contracts, technical documents, rehearsal, and on site. Nothing is machine-translated and handed over unchecked.
- What travels, what is local
- Performers, instruments, and any custom device we built travel with us. Staging, rigging, generic lighting and sound, and crew are usually sourced locally — it is cheaper and it keeps your venue's own people in the loop. We will tell you which line is which in the quote.
- Pricing
- Quoted against scope, never a list price. Our fee and pass-through costs (travel, freight, local hire, manufacturing) are separated. Currency and who carries the exchange risk are set in the contract, not assumed.
- Rights
- The staging design, the footage, the photographs, and any second use are settled in writing before work starts. If you need broadcast or long-term marketing use, say so at the brief stage — it changes the performer agreements.
- Our size
- Small. We work as a studio with a network of performers and makers. We would rather tell you that than imply a scale we do not have. In practice it means the people you brief are the people who build it.
What we will not do
- We do not stage Shinto rites themselves. Where a ceremonial form is real, we say so and cite it. Where a piece is our own composition, we say that too. We do not invent ceremony to fill a gap in a programme.
- We do not present a shrine, a lineage, or a practitioner as endorsing work they have not seen.
- We do not quote a date we do not believe we can hit. If your schedule is not reachable, you will hear it at the brief stage.
Start with the constraint.
The most useful first message is the one with the hard limits in it — the date that cannot move, the ceiling height, the budget ceiling. We will work from there.