After eight years as artistic director for drama at the New National Theatre, Tokyo, Keiko Miyata, 60, is now tackling her final program there before passing the baton to 39-year-old Eriko Ogawa, who is set to become the theater's youngest-ever director in September.

Rather than bowing out with a guaranteed crowd-pleaser, though, Miyata will mark this occasion by staging "Morning Disappearance" ("Kieteikunara Asa"), a contemporary drama she commissioned from emerging playwright and director Ryuta Horai.

Yet that's not altogether surprising, because she launched her tenure at the Shinjuku Ward institution in 2010 with no less than a splendid, but unlikely, production of Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen's challenging 1890 classic, "Hedda Gabler," starring Mao Daichi, a top actress formerly with the all-female Takarazuka musical theater troupe.