Economy
Fed to start tapering bond purchases this year: Bernanke
by No Author
The Federal Reserve maintains its $85 billion-a-month asset purchase program, but says it could begin scaling back later this year.
Events Outside Tokyo Jun 27, 2008
Revel in Lock's fusion of dance
For more than 25 years, the Canadian troupe La La La Human Steps has been hailed as one of the world’s leading and most radical contemporary dance companies since it was founded by Moroccan-born Edouard Lock in 1980. At age 3 in 1957, Lock ...
Stage Jun 19, 2008
Tracing political cause and effect
Dramatists in their 30s have moved to the forefront of Japanese contemporary theater in recent years. Since 2004, the country’s most prestigious theater accolade, the Kishida Drama Award, has gone to thirtysomething playwright/ directors Daisuke Miura, Toshiki Okada and Shiro Maeda. Also, the New ...
Stage Jun 12, 2008
The space to act out in Shizuoka
Shizuoka Performing Arts Center is Japan’s first so-called European-style public theater. Founded by the Shizuoka prefectural government in 1997, it has its own company (also called SPAC) and an artistic director in residence when the norm is for public theater companies to share venues ...
_unknown | CLOSE-UP May 4, 2008
Acting with joy in his soul
Even in today’s theater world in Japan, which tends to venerate age, at just 52 Hideki Noda is already a towering, legendary figure. Wherever you go and talk to dramatists or stage performers, you will find his name and achievements almost invariably come up. ...
Events Outside Tokyo May 2, 2008
Blue Man Group wants you
It’s been nearly five months since the blue-painted, robotic Blue Man Group first landed in Japan from planet America. During that two-month run, thousands of audience members experienced a close encounter of the cobalt kind. Now the azure-colored baldies are back, putting on shows ...
Stage Apr 10, 2008
A home in Tokyo
Brooklyn-born Robert Allan Ackerman first landed in Japan in 1990 to direct “Mystery of the Rose Bouquet” by Manuel Puig at the Benisan Pit in Tokyo. Several years later, the American became an associate director of Theater Project Tokyo (TPT), which was founded in ...
Events Outside Tokyo Mar 28, 2008
Mayakovsky play sets future in our hands
The great Russian playwright and futurist poet Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893-1930) wrote the 60-role play “Mystery Bouffe” 90 years ago. An avant-garde and labyrinthine Noah’s Ark story set after disasters have laid waste the Earth, the plot centers on the confrontation of two opposing new ...
Events Outside Tokyo Mar 21, 2008
Setagaya theater brings kyogen forward
Mansai Nomura is the leading star of kyogen (Japan’s traditional comedy theater), but this 41-year-old who made his stage debut at age 3 has several other artistic faces, having acted in films, TV dramas and in contemporary theater dramas, too. It was because of ...
Events Outside Tokyo Mar 21, 2008
New York Theater Workshop
Founded in 1979 in Manhattan’s trendy East Village, the New York Theater Workshop (NYTW) is one of the most provocative and successful off-Broadway theaters in the United States. The megahit Broadway musical “RENT” by Jonathan Larson was born as a NYTW studio production in ...
Stage Mar 6, 2008
Sulky modern youths return
“It was officially the runaway disaster of 2006. I was really glad that so many people didn’t like it at all,” laughs 34-year-old Toshiki Okada about his debut at the New National Theater, “Enjoy,” which Japan’s theater critics voted the year’s worst play. The ...
Art Feb 21, 2008
A living play appears from the past
“I have absolutely no idea beforehand what exactly I am going to do. Everything comes together really at the last minute,” says 50-year-old English dramatist Simon McBurney when asked how he’s approaching his latest collaboration. Working with Japanese actors, McBurney is producing “Shunkin,” a ...
Stage Jan 24, 2008
From ordinary to spectacular
Go Aoki is one of Japan’s most in-demand playwrights and directors. The small venues where his Gring theater company typically stages his works attract drama-world insiders — as a result, besides taking Gring on the road in early 2008, Aoki has already been enlisted ...