Last October, 27-year-old kabuki actor Onoe Kikunosuke called theater director Yukio Ninagawa, who was working in London at the time, to see if he would create a unique kabuki piece for Kikunosuke's debut production for the Kabuki-za.
Together they decided to ask playwright Toyoshige Imai to write a kabuki script based on Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night."
Imai produced a three-act version of the play from Yushi Odajima's 1983 translation, with assistance from Ninagawa, Kikunosuke and Onoe Kikugoro (Kikunosuke's father).