Genki 2014: Hogwarts Tosa-Style School of Magic and Witchcraft

Hello!

Last weekend was the final run of this year's Genki musical. Our last half of the tour took us to the East side of the prefecture and finished in Kochi City. It was a bit more tiring than the first weekend of tour because this time we had four shows instead of three, and also we stayed overnight in sort of a hostel/inn rather than returning to the city on Saturday night. But it was also the most exciting part of the tour. Since we'd had a few run-throughs on real stages at this point, the cast was  pretty comfortable with the show and could add interesting things to their performances. And the audiences just kept getting better from town to town. In smaller venues people are often afraid to laugh or clap, but we got a good response from most of the audiences, which was really encouraging.

As I've mentioned before, the show was about Harry Potter. While on a whaling trip with the Dursleys, their ship is sunk by a monster whale and Harry gets stranded on an island. He gets picked up by Hagrid and taken to Hogwarts Tosa-Style School of Magic and Witchcraft. There he makes friends with Ron and Hermione, and also learns some magic. Soon after, the three friends go trying to find Voldemort, who wants to prevent internationalization and isolate Tosa (Kochi) from outside contact. They eventually find Voldemort and defeat him with the power of the Tosa Family (a concept from a recent tourism campaign).

There are so many pictures that I honestly don't know where to start, so rather than try to give you an overview of the entire show, I may just share some of my absolute favorites. I'll try to give a little explanation for each.

Encore performance of one of the dances

Everyone hanging out at the hostel on Saturday night. Mary is wearing Dumbledore's fake beard.

Team Evil dancing to the "In the Dark of the Night" song from Anastasia (lyrics rewritten in Japanese to fit our theme, of course).

Voldemort! So. Evil.

One of the places we performed! It's actually a kabuki theater, so we were really lucky to get to do a show there.

Me singing a solo. 

Ron was sniffing my hair while I wasn't paying attention >_<

Voldemort and Bellatrix. Bellatrix has a Harry Potter puppet which she is stabbing with chopsticks.

Ron got turned into mochi! Mochi is a sticky cake made of rice flour.

Draco and a random Hufflepuff (Tina).

We even went to the shopping mall in costume. This is me and Ashley on the escalator. Ashley was rather distressed when a barista at Starbucks asked if she was dressed as Michael Jackson.

Harry, Ron and Hermione hide behind a rock while the evil minions search for them.

Harry is being reunited with the ghosts of his parents, and Ron just said something really stupid.

Harry and the Dursleys are attacked by a monster whale!

The whale is designed to look like a "Titan" from the show "Attack on Titan". Basically, the Titans are giants that eat people. A lot of them are missing some/most of their skin, hence the whale looking like muscle and tendon.

Natasha putting on her Dumbledore makeup.

Harry wiped his sweaty hands on my robes :(

Quality bonding time with Ashley! That's my unconscious body she's sitting on.

Bellatrix is crazy. Here she is tormenting her Harry Potter puppet again.

Hagrid and Voldemort after the show!

Anyhow, I'm sorry the photos aren't in a particularly logical order, but I don't have the brainpower to make a coherent narrative right now. I hope you enjoyed them all the same. When I get a few more photos I'm going to print them out and put them into my scrapbook, so perhaps I can show you that when I get home.