Sumitomo Pavilion Creator’s Voice Vol.6 Rin Tanaka(Dentsu Live)
Hello, this is the Sumitomo Pavilion.
In this series, Sumitomo Pavilion Creators’ Voice, we introduce, little by little, the voices of the creative staff who have been involved in our exhibitions, architecture, and production.
Each story is filled with passion for the Expo and the Pavilion, the hardships they have overcome, and the non-negotiable values they hold dear.
Our featured voice this time is Rin Tanaka of Dentsu Live—someone who has led the Sumitomo Pavilion with dedication and helped bring UNKNOWN FOREST to life with love.
＜Profile＞
Event producer. She produced numerous highly theatrical events, including fan events in the IP content field, nationwide touring parades, and concerts. Always striving to create unprecedented entertainment experiences.
https://www.dentsulive.co.jp/en/
What led you to get involved with the Sumitomo Pavilion?
I believe I joined this project around the autumn of 2021.
At the time, I had virtually no knowledge of the Expo—not even a clear idea of what a pavilion was. But when I visited Expo 2020 Dubai that year and saw Japan Pavilion and many others from around the world, my perspective changed completely. I realized the importance of the Expo as a place where diverse people from across borders gather and connect, and I discovered entertainment experiences that can only be found there. That’s when I began to feel a strong sense of excitement and anticipation.
The trial and error continued even after opening.
One of the highlights of the Sumitomo Pavilion is the way visitors can freely explore the forest in an open-route format. However, this freedom of movement made predicting guest behavior a real challenge. Because there’s no fixed path, the quality of the experience can change significantly depending on how visitors move.
During the production phase, we designed the forest by imagining possible guest movements, deciding where to place each performance, and setting the event trigger timings through trial and error. However, when working with long-time team members, it was easy to fall into the trap of assuming the “ideal” visitor behavior we hoped for.
To break that assumption, just before opening we held several tests where staff who knew nothing about the performance content played the role of visitors. Their movements were completely different from what we’d imagined, which was eye-opening. As a result, we made major changes and adjustments to both the overall performance content and the event trigger timings.
Even after opening, we spent about a month in constant fine-tuning. We observed visitor behavior and collected feedback from the operations team, making improvements such as “shortening this performance” or “starting this one earlier.”
Developing Sumitomo Pavilion’s unique experiential design for the future.
The Sumitomo Pavilion’s UNKNOWN FOREST offers visitors a grand story in two parts.
First, guests take a lantern and freely explore the forest, gathering fragments of “stories of life” scattered throughout. Next, in the Performing Theater, those gathered stories are woven together into a single, grand narrative shared by everyone.
This combination—linking a walk-through attraction with a theatrical performance to complete one story—is a distinctive feature of the Sumitomo Pavilion. In the sense that each guest experiences their own unique version of the story, it shares similarities with immersive theater such as Sleep No More. However, here the visitors actively collect narrative threads themselves, which then merge into the finale, creating an entirely new type of entertainment.
I believe this format—where each guest collects dispersed narrative elements that are ultimately resolved and shared—has great potential to be applied to other entertainment fields. Carrying forward this experience structure could lead to evolved forms of existing entertainment like film or theater.
A one-of-a-kind, luxury stage experience in a space designed from scratch.
While I’d love visitors to notice the intricate construction and performance experiences of UNKNOWN FOREST, personally I especially hope many will experience the luxury of the Performing Theater.
Here, dance, visuals, sound, and mist merge to create a deeply immersive stage work. A layered structure—transparent screen in front, LED screen behind, with the dancers’ performance area in between—enables a rich sense of depth.
While transparent-screen visuals are used in recent music concerts, in our theater this is combined with surround sound and mist effects to deliver a one-of-a-kind, story-driven stage experience.
Because the space was designed from zero, we can attempt expressions that wouldn’t be possible in an existing theater. I hope not only fans of film, theater, and dance, but also those involved in production and stage direction, will come and experience it.
A six-month ultra-long run—don’t miss the dancers who embody the wind.
In the story of UNKNOWN FOREST, the “wind” is an important motif symbolizing a force that transforms life. Please pay special attention to the dancers who embody this wind—choreographed by dancer Kentaro Kobayashi and costumed by designer Tamae Hirokawa. These talented performers each express one of four distinct “winds” with both delicacy and strength.
This production runs for six months, with an ambitious schedule of about 30 performances a day. But it offers an expression of wind that can only be experienced in the theater—I hope you will feel it for yourself.
