Dream Girls

"We will never meet such men, but it helps to alleviate the pain of life for a moment." Two fans of the Takarazuka Revue explain why they are so infatuated with an illusory and erotic fantasy world. For 27 years now, the Takarazuka Revue has been a highly successful Japanese theatre project, portraying love in its most romantic, innocent and passionate form. A remarkable feature of the revue is that even the male roles are performed by female actors. Sociologists explain the revue’s success by pointing out the lack of romance in Japanese society, where economic ethics are imperious. Dream Girls explores the hard life behind the scenes of the revue where only a few are admitted per year. A stern and highly disciplined training period awaits them in which they will be seriously humiliated because the supervisors of the revue (indeed men) think that will be advantageous to their character development.