Claude Regy says the team at the Shizuoka Performing Arts Center (SPAC) threw him the "best birthday party ever" when he arrived in Japan just days after the actual May 1 occasion.
The 90-year-old French director is hoping for an even better birthday gift, though, as he is here to re-create — with Japanese actors — his triumphant 1985 staging of "Interior" by the Belgian Nobel-laureate playwright Maurice Maeterlinck.
Shizuoka is a great place to do that. Regy's "Interior" will be a part of this year's SPAC festival — World Theater Festival in Shizuoka Under Mt. Fuji — which has been growing in scope and reputation and runs on weekends through the entire month of June. While the title is lengthy, it's not a misnomer. The festival takes place at SPAC's Shizuoka Arts Theater as well as several open-air venues including the Udo Theater, set amid tea fields in the Nihondaira hills; in the precincts of a shrine in the nearby city of Fujinomiya; and on the water at a marine park in the city of Shimizu.