Kyoto Experiment, the city's monthlong international performing-arts festival that debuted in 2010 and has been growing in popularity in the vanguard of contemporary performance every year since, is now set to embark on its fifth and most radical edition. The ongoing success of this publicly ...
Satoshi Ago has been in the news lately following his appointment as artistic director of the small but pioneering Kyoto theater, Atelier Gekken. Since long before that, however, the playwright, actor and director has been renowned for his thought-provoking "theater of mechanical reproduction." Strongly influenced ...
With its declared mission being to widen participation, this summer's 68th Avignon Festival in the South of France boasted 37 productions from 17 countries, with 25 of the works by newcomers and half by artists under 35. As well, the work chosen to open ...
As a dancer, choreographer, philosopher and now professor in the Department of Scenography Design, Drama and Dance at Tama Art University in Setagaya, Tokyo, Saburo Teshigawara has been extending the range of his talents ever since he stopped studying visual arts and sculpture to ...
How do you imagine the Prince of Denmark? Perhaps as one of the famed portrayals by Laurence Olivier, Kenneth Branagh, Mel Gibson or Ethan Hawke — or simply as a weak-willed bore forever agonizing over "To be or not to be" and all that. ...
Cultures collide on the small square stage of Mansai Nomura's pared-down "Macbeth," in which the actor/director draws on the restrained aesthetics of noh and the agility and wit of kyōgen traditional comic theater as he transplants his version of Shakespeare's blood-soaked Scottish play to ...
The small hot-spring resort of Kinosaki beside the Sea of Japan in northern Hyogo Prefecture is as picturesque as it is peacefully genteel. However, with April's opening of the Kinosaki International Arts Center (KIAC), this rural home to fewer than 5,000 now aims to ...
As one in a series of special productions to mark its centennial, Takarazuka — Japan's longest-standing theater company with all-female casts — is reviving "The Rose of Versailles — Oscar," its 1972 hit adaptation of an acclaimed manga series by Riyoko Ikeda that, in ...
On Dec. 18, 2013, the Festival/Tokyo website announced that following the implementation of "a new administration system," Program Director Chiaki Soma, 38, would resign from her position and be replaced at the end of March 2014 by Sachio Ichimura, 64, the then chairman of ...
It is often said that "variety is the spice of life," but in the multifarious world of theater it is more a staple than a special condiment. That said, "variety" is the keyword chosen by Satoshi Miyagi, artistic director of the Shizuoka Performing Arts ...
