Midway through the triumphant two-week run of his summer-festival kabuki classic "Togitatsu no Utare," cutting-edge director Hideki Noda took time to reflect on his remarkable crossover from contemporary theater to the Kabuki-za in Ginza (no less).
What is the difference between directing modern drama with your Noda Map company and directing kabuki?
I paid a lot of attention to adapting the traditional pace of kabuki to today's rhythms. But I didn't just try to speed up the movement, I wanted to fit the rhythm of modern Japanese language naturally to the plot.