It has been almost two years since pop group SMAP split up, but its demise after over two decades at the forefront of entertainment in Japan is still fresh in everyone's memory.

For theater lovers, though, what's great is that three of SMAP's five former members have since been busy on stage, with Goro Inagaki now playing the deaf composer Beethoven in a reprise of Kazuki Nakashima's 2015 play "No. 9: Fumetsu no Senritsu" and Shingo Katori set to star in "Nihon no Rekishi," a new musical by top playwright Koki Mitani.

As for the third member who has risen to the challenge of live theater, Tsuyoshi Kusanagi is now in rehearsals for the upcoming Tokyo world-premiere dramatization of Italian maestro Federico Fellini's 1954 film masterpiece, "La Strada" ("The Road").