“Short-Term” Visitor To Japan Serves Up A Rare Shakespeare Treat After Only 20 Years
When Peter Goessner’s wife got a contract to teach at a university in the city of Kitakyushu,...
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Japan
Kyoto Experiment Autumn 2016
Kyoto Experiment, or the Kyoto International Performing Arts Festival, will be held for the...
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Festival/Tokyo Speaks With A Defiant Voice
Press conferences are usually upbeat affairs, but at the one held to herald Festival/Tokyo — a...
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Munby’s “Crucible” Speaks To Societies Built On Fear
“When the opportunity came to work at Theatre Cocoon in Tokyo, I was so excited about the great...
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Kabuki’s Bando Tamasaburo V Takes Kodo Drum Troupe In An Artistic New Direction With “Spiral”
To celebrate its 35th anniversary, the internationally renowned Kodo drumming troupe staged three...
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Kyôgen Comedies’ Embedded Dramaturgy: 13 Lessons for Theater Practitioners
Kyôgen (狂言) are short, stylized comedies performed between somber masked-dance noh (能) for over...
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Dance Icon Saburo Teshigawara’s “Magic Flute” Brings Abstract Notes To Mozart’s Final Gem
Since studying visual arts and sculpture before taking up ballet at the age of 20 in 1973, Saburo...
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“Dragon Quest” Show Pulls Its Audiences Into The Action
For gamers and lovers of sheer theatrical spectacle alike, the summer’s hottest ticket seems sure...
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Butoh For Kids Has Fun With “Birthday Suit” Tale
“Gloomy,” “eerie,” “vulgar,” “avant-garde” and “conceptual” are adjectives often used to describe...
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Dramatist Speaks Up For The Downtrodden And New Thinking In Japan
Fifty-three-year-old Oriza Hirata unexpectedly arrived early for our 9 a.m. interview in a Tokyo...
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Jo Kanamori And Oriza Hirata Retell “La Bayadere” With A Dose Of Political Awareness
The atmosphere at the Imperial Bolshoi Kamenny Theater in St. Petersburg, Russia, must have been...
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“Tell Me” Lays Bare One Woman’s Quest
The first thing Yojiro Ichikawa said when we sat down for our recent interview in a Tokyo...
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World Was A Stage For Acclaimed Theater Director Yukio Ninagawa
Acclaimed stage director Yukio Ninagawa was a titan of global theater but his hand felt...
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Theater Festival’s Roots Dig Deep Into Shizuoka
In recent years, theater fans and artists here and abroad have increasingly been wakening up to...
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Strindberg’s Surrealistic “Dream” Heralds A Pivotal Era For KAAT
He doesn’t officially become Kanagawa Arts Theatre’s artistic director until April 1, but Akira...
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Cultural Differences Over Suicide Made For An Interesting Creative Process In “Eternal Chikamatsu”
In 2014, rising playwright and director Kenichi Tani translated Harold Pinter’s Old Times for an...
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Zainichi Dramas Delve Into Japan’s Shadows
“At last, the masterpiece Yakiniku Dragon (Korean Barbecue Dragon) is going to be staged again!”...
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“Crazy Camel” Helps Butoh Over The Hump
“Many people have a preconception about butoh — that it is performed by dancers whose bodies...
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Takehiro Hira Steps Into a 19th-Century Affair in the Award-Winning “Kaku Onna”
Tokyo was bathed in warm sunshine in the run-up to 2016, and when Takehiro Hira meets me at a...
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Japan’s Theater Scene Begins to Decentralize
Tokyo has long been the center of Japan’s theatre world, but in 2014, that began to change,...
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