With a piercing yell, Kuranosuke Sasaki bursts out of the rehearsal studio, his hands covered in (fake) blood. Then seeing me, he smiles and says, “Sorry to keep you waiting” — before returning to intensive preparations with American director Andrew Goldberg for his starring role in their one-man “Macbeth,” which ...
The new head of the Takarazuka Revue Company says he aims to lay the foundations for the musical theater troupe to continue to flourish long into the future, after the all-female company celebrated its 100th anniversary last year. President Tomotsugu Ogawa, the 58-year-old former ...
It’s Trocks time again, as that madcap melange of comedy and classical ballet trucks into Tokyo this weekend at the start of a monthlong nationwide tour — the troupe’s 28th to Japan over more than 30 years. Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, to ...
This year it’s quite noticeable how many non-Japanese are directing plays in Tokyo — not frequent and famed visitors such as David Leveaux, Robert Lepage and Simon McBurney, but relative unknowns here making their debuts at two leading large commercial theaters that almost always ...
Shoko Nakamura embarked on a challenging journey when she began retraining for ballet performances just one month after giving birth to her son, Joel, in 2011. The dancer, who goes by just her first name when performing, says the physical pain involved in getting ...
Though it’s 40 years since Italian playwright Dacia Maraini wrote “Mary Stuart,” this story of two queens — Elizabeth I of England and Ireland and Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots — remains as relevant now as ever in its portrayal of two women burning ...
Named after a prominent early 20th-century playwright, author and translator, and presented annually by the Hakusuisha publishing house since 1955, the Kishida Kunio Drama Award is indisputably Japan’s top honor for writers of plays premiered the year before. As the same person can only ...
When this year’s nominees for the top honors in U.S. theater, the annual Tony Awards, were announced on April 28, the new musicals “An American in Paris” and “Fun Home” led the field after each being listed in 12 categories. In total and absurd ...
Hisashi Inoue’s death at the age of 75 on April 9, 2010, at his home in Kamakura, Kanagawa Prefecture, was a major event in the postwar Japanese theater world. It moved many dramatists to stage works by the great author and playwright who combined ...
Public theaters across the country are holding significantly more community productions and workshops aimed at local residents who are looking to get involved in performance art. Undoubtedly that’s in part thanks to the pioneering work of the nation’s leading dramatist on the world stage, ...
For dance fans, there’s the promise of some glittering Golden Week holiday reunions as David Bintley, long-time director of the Birmingham Royal Ballet, returns here with that company for the first time since his four-year stint doubling up as artistic director of the National ...
If you’re so busy wondering how to spend the upcoming Golden Week holiday that you can hardly sleep, why not simply go and enjoy the TACT/Festival at TMET (Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre) in Ikebukuro — where you can count sheep, too, if you want. Following ...
Of all U.S. playwright Tennessee Williams’s many major works — including “A Streetcar Named Desire” and “The Glass Menagerie” — “Orpheus Descending,” which opens in Tokyo next week with a star-studded Japanese cast and multi-award-winning English director Phillip Breen at the helm, is among ...
