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 Mika Eglinton

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Mika Eglinton
Mika Eglinton is a performing arts researcher, critic and journalist. She is professor of English theater and cultural studies at Kobe University of Foreign Studies. She is also actively involved in the creation of theater as a translator, dramaturg and facilitator.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHY DID YOU LEAVE JAPAN?
Jan 13, 2018
Artist Naoko Tanaka uses light, space and objects to explore the 'unknowable inner outside world'
Performance artist feels immense pressure to fit into a mold in Japan.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / 20 QUESTIONS
Dec 9, 2017
Diego Pellecchia: When heavy metal and noh collide
Noh scholar and practitioner talks about what noh, heavy metal and fantasy literature have in common.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Apr 27, 2017
The ambiguous world of today's ventriloquists
Franco-Austrian choreographer and director Gisele Vienne is fascinated by puppets and brings a group of nine ventriloquists and their marionettes to the stage in her latest piece, "The Ventriloquists Convention." The play is part of the World Theatre Festival Shizuoka run by Shizuoka Performing Arts...
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
Nov 22, 2016
Ong's spellbinding take on 'Richard III'
He is one of Asia's foremost theater directors, and Ong Keng Sen looked to be enjoying his latest challenge when we met in Tokyo in March during rehearsals for "Sandaime Richard," Japanese dramatist Hideki Noda's iconoclastic adaptation of Shakespeare's "Richard III."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Oct 25, 2016
Kyoto Experiment festival revels in breaking barriers
"Good fences make good neighbors" is an often-quoted line from Robert Frost's poem "Mending Wall" about two farmers united in their effort to rebuild a wall that divides their land. Less well known is the poem's central query: "Why do good fences make good neighbors?" It's a question that seems particularly...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Sep 27, 2016
Ishinha set for stunning final show
Performing on deserted beaches and in villages, temples, dockland warehouses and urban railyards, few theater companies can have traversed the range of landscapes and settings that have inspired Osaka-based Ishinha.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Apr 26, 2016
Young dramatists mark the Bard's anniversary in style
Hot on the heels of Hideki Noda's radical adaptation of "Richard III" being staged by Singaporean director Ong Ken Seng at Shizuoka Performing Arts Center from April 29 to May 1, another intriguing transformation of Shakespeare's Machiavellian king will follow at Theatre Fuusikaden in Tokyo from May...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Feb 23, 2016
Kyoto Experiment goes from strength to strength
“It may be wrong to mix different wines, but old and new wisdom make an excellent mixture." So claims The Singer in Bertolt Brecht's 1944 play, "The Caucasian Chalk Circle."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jan 26, 2016
Takarazuka's musical gives the Bard new life
Marking four centuries since the death of William Shakespeare in 1616, the 101-year-old all-female Takarazuka Revue company is currently staging a new musical titled "Shakespeare: The Sky Filled With Eternal Words" at its Takarazuka Grand Theater in Takarazuka, Hyogo Prefecture, ahead of a Tokyo season...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Dec 22, 2015
'New' Kyoto theater promises a mighty arts boost
More than half a century since it opened in 1960 as one of Japan's first multipurpose cultural centers, and almost exactly four years after its doors last closed, the Kyoto Kaikan will be reborn transformed on Jan. 10 as the ROHM Theatre Kyoto.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Oct 27, 2015
Asia Series casts F/T's net wide
Aiming to foster regional theater links through research, fieldwork and creative exchange, Festival/Tokyo last year launched its new Asia Series, focused then on South Korea. This year it's the turn of Myanmar, with three artists from the evolving scene there being introduced to F/T 2015 audiences.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Aug 25, 2015
New Ishinha performance taps timeless 'Twilight' zone
Tokyo may be Japan's performing-arts hub, but a growing number of artists are swapping the strictures of its cultural marketplace for the creative and lifestyle benefits of life outside the capital.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jul 21, 2015
Performing arts poised to bloom at ETAT 2015
The sixth Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale is set to start July 26 in Tokamachi City and Tsunan Town in Niigata Prefecture, north-central Honshu.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Apr 28, 2015
Orpheus descends on Japan
Of all U.S. playwright Tennessee Williams's many major works — including "A Streetcar Named Desire" and "The Glass Menagerie" — "Orpheus Descending," which opens in Tokyo next week with a star-studded Japanese cast and multi-award-winning English director Phillip Breen at the helm, is among...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Feb 25, 2015
Takarazuka double-bill special marks the end of a Star star's era
The 101-year-old all-female Takarazuka Revue company is currently staging a double bill of "Like a Black Panther" and "Dear Diamond!!" at its Takarazuka Grand Theater in the city of Takarazuka, Hyogo Prefecture, prior to a long Tokyo run from late March that will see its top star, Reon Yuzuki, take her...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Feb 4, 2015
Groundbreaking Bard double bill is set to surprise in more ways than one
Over the past decade, Shintaro Mori has made a name for himself in Japan's theater world as a director with a passion for plays in translation. So, true to form, next month at the ACM Theater in Art Tower Mito he is staging a double bill comprising Shakespeare's comedy "Twelfth Night" (or "What You Will"),...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jan 7, 2015
'Flies' festers at core of family life
Central to William Golding's dystopian novel "Lord of the Flies" is the notion of violence as a social construct. "Maybe there is a beast ... maybe it's only us," says the protective Simon before a hostile assembly of other schoolboys marooned on the uninhabited island where the English Nobel laureate...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jan 7, 2015
Uyama's new 'Lear' acts his age
"You see me here, you gods, a poor old man,As full of grief as age; wretched in both!"
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jan 1, 2015
Japan's artists aim to foster intra-Asia links
The subject of Japan's position in the world of Asian performing arts has been widely addressed over the past decade, and the new leadership of last year's Festival/Tokyo — its largest annual performing-arts event — vowed to step up efforts to develop collaborations and exchanges within Asia.

Longform

Rows of irises resemble a rice field at the Peter Walker-designed Toyota Municipal Museum of Art.
The 'outsiders' creating some of Japan's greenest spaces