As a playwright, stage director, Osaka University professor, manager of the Komaba Agora Theater in Tokyo and leader of the city's Seinendan theater company he formed in 1983, Oriza Hirata — whose "contemporary colloquial theater" set the scene for much of Japan's new drama over the last 20 years — has long been in the forefront of Japan's theater world.
Lately, however, he's also been spreading his wings internationally — and into other realms as well.
That's because Hirata, 52, has been working since 2008 on what he calls his Robot Theatre Project — assisted in fusing art and technology by Hiroshi Ishiguro, a famed robot developer and fellow professor at Osaka University.