What are you guys looking forward to and hoping for in Bangkok?

Shiono : It’s the first time UMEBOU and I personally have ever expanded to other countries in Asia. I heard that Thailand is a particularly energetic country. We’ll take in that energy, and I wish to leave them great memories in return.

Naraki : I think it’s the first step towards UMEBOU’s worldwide expansion and we’re trying to see how far we can go, and looking forward to see how well we can perform in a different environment.

Tsuruno : We’ve been challenging in Japan to express ourselves to the audience with no speaking words. This time, the audience in Thailand is not going to understand what the J-pop artists are singing about. I am looking forward to how much we can make them understand the story behind our show. Also, looking forward to meeting real drag queens!

Ito : People know our history, and watching our show connects them with the Japanese lyrics, but nobody knows us in Thailand and it’s like starting from zero to understand us from our performance alone – it’s a very unique situation. I’m very excited for this opportunity for us to study ourselves, to see how we can tell a story just through performance in these showcases. I’d like to focus on this aspect of the performance.

What are the individual roles in UMEBOU and what is the group’s strength?

Ito : I’m the one watching the overall performance. Myself, Umezawa, Sakurai and Noda have occupations as actors, while Tsuruno, Naranoki, Oomura and Shiono have occupations as dancers, and lino has an occupation as a photographer.Amano is a Japanese company man and also the director of UMEBOU, but he couldn’t be part of the show this time. The advantage of having four actors and four dances is that we can have discussions with both theatrical and dance side of views. Not only do the dancers have their own styles, everyone also has a different approach. These are the fun parts that no other crew has.