Tag - oriza-hirata

 
 

ORIZA HIRATA

Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Sep 3, 2020
Toyooka Theater Festival brings French flair to Japan’s theater scene
Dramatist Oriza Hirata's dream of holding Japan's version of the Avignon Festival is becoming a reality with a two-week arts fete starting on Sept. 9.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jul 9, 2019
Mastering the art of multilingual performance
Tokyo's cozy 60-odd-seat Komaba Agora Theater isn't perhaps where you would expect a cutting-edge multilingual drama experiment to be staged, but that's just where Oriza Hirata has chosen to work his latest magic.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jan 11, 2018
Dramatist Oriza Hirata has a vision for theater
Travel around around 150 km northwest from the hustle and bustle of Kyoto and another, far more peaceful world awaits in the compact onsen (hot-spring) town of Kinosaki nestled on the Sea of Japan coast in a quiet corner of the largely rural city of Toyooka in Hyogo Prefecture.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jan 24, 2017
T-C-T and TPAM set to offer a hot winter's feast of the arts
A bonanza is brewing in Tokyo and Yokohama for lovers of cross-cultural contemporary theater.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jun 21, 2016
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 family restaurant one recent Sunday morning. Not only that, but the famed playwright and director turned up alone without the squad of minders such people's managers generally send along to stop them making headlines for reasons they wouldn't like.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jun 16, 2016
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 electric on Feb. 4, 1877. That was the day Austrian composer Ludwig Minkus premiered "La Bayadere" — the latest masterpiece of classical ballet by French choreographer Marius Petipa — to some of Europe's cultural elite.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 11, 2015
Can idol group Momoiro Clover Z learn to act?
The typical Japanese movie about the travails and triumphs of a high school club follows an upward arc, as the audience cheers on the heroes to their foregone triumph over setbacks and defeats. The actualities of how they become more accomplished swing musicians, as in "Swing Girls," or choral singers, as in "Kuchibiru ni Uta Wo" ("Have a Song on Your Lips"), are sketched, but no one would ever call these films how-to guides.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Dec 24, 2014
2014: New horizons opened up in Japan's theater world
Looking back over the past 12 months in Japan's theater world, it's clear that one encouraging trend is a lessening of the capital's dominance.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Nov 26, 2014
French idol reflects on her Japanese droid son
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.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Oct 1, 2014
Kafka's worm takes a high-tech turn
"I work a lot in France, where manga and anime are enormously popular, although many theater producers think they are basically for children and are often too violent. However, they regard my robot theater as being an essentially Japanese art form," the pioneering dramatist Oriza Hirata said recently during a break in rehearsals for his upcoming version of Franz Kafka's absurdist gem, "The Metamorphosis."

Longform

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