In 2006, when the world-renowned director Yukio Ninagawa announced open auditions for Saitama Gold Theatre — a project he launched with the slogan, "If you are over 55, let's create theater together and go on a foreign tour" — there were cynics eager to brand the applicants as dreamy wannabe Cinderellas or deluded Don Quixote types.
Yet ever since Ninagawa assessed almost 1,200 people and selected 48 to start late-blossoming careers as actors, the troupe has regularly been performing before paying, sellout audiences. And in May 2013, that "foreign tour" slogan became reality when SGT debuted in Paris with sprightly 77-year-old Ninagawa directing "Raven, we shall load Bullets," a work specially created by veteran playwright Kunio Shimizu.
Meanwhile, some of SGT's 39 remaining actors — 14 men and 25 women, average age 75 — are now also taking roles in professional works directed by Ninagawa and others. In the coming months, too, SGT will fly back to Paris to stage "Raven" again — then make its Asian debut with the same work in Hong Kong.