"I have absolutely no idea beforehand what exactly I am going to do. Everything comes together really at the last minute," says 50-year-old English dramatist Simon McBurney when asked how he's approaching his latest collaboration. Working with Japanese actors, McBurney is producing "Shunkin," a play based on works by Taisho Era novelist Junichiro Tanizaki (1896-1965), for a world premiere on Feb. 21 at Tokyo's Setagaya Public Theatre (SEPT).
The cofounder of the London-based Complicite theater company, McBurney first worked with SEPT in 2003 on "Elephant Vanishes," a work based on stories by the novelist Haruki Murakami. Whereas "Elephant Vanishes" examined the lonely lives of modern urban dwellers, "Shunkin" looks to the past to tell of a mysterious relationship between Shunkin, a blind koto master, and her servant and lover Sasuke.
McBurney has drawn on Tanizaki's 1933 works "Shunkin Sho (A Portrait of Shunkin)," a short novel, and "In'ei Raisan (In Praise of Shadows)," an essay on aesthetics. Fascinated by the works since he first visited Japan, the English director tells The Japan Times what he's learned from them about memory, language and identity.