"Diversity is the outstanding attraction of high school drama, so I'm always appreciating afresh theater's myriad charms," the prominent director Keisuke Tanaka said with a beaming smile during a recent interview ahead of the fifth annual High School Drama Summit at Tokyo's leading Agora Theater.

The event, which Tanaka is overseeing for the third time this year, showcases some of the nation's best fledgling dramatists as three carefully selected high school drama troupes take up a three-day residence to each consecutively stage a short play each day.

Sitting beside 30-something Tanaka, and around 10 years his senior, the actor and director Naruhiko Hayashi — the Summit's founder and producer — added, "For me, discovering high school drama was like finding a new world. The first time I saw it I was entirely amazed by the scope of content and the students' youthful enthusiasm."

Explaining that he sees some 250 high school productions a year, and is a judge in many competitions, he said, "I want to make this fantastically rich theater culture widely known to people not even aware it exists."

As drama is regrettably not a compulsory school subject in Japan, and few universities have drama courses, most young dramatists pursue theater activities through school clubs — though the majority give up when they leave school. Nonetheless, the high school drama scene is keenly followed by some theater-lovers and professionals, who have lately especially relished many original plays by students in the Tohoku region of northern Honshu hardest hit by the March 11, 2011, disasters.

Among those works, several have toured extensively — notably ones by students at Iwaki Integrated High School in Fukushima Prefecture and Aomori Chuo High School, whose accomplished and earnest acting graced their sensitive, straight and heartfelt texts.

As Hayashi explained, though, high school students all over Japan are working every day with the aim of winning local and regional events in order to qualify for a leading national drama competition — just as school baseball teams might strive to reach the annual national Koshien showpiece.

Just like baseball, too, high school drama competitions have strict rules, and performances can last no longer than 1 hour, 59 seconds — so sometimes troupes must close the curtain before the end to avoid being disqualified. In addition, stage set-up and clearing times are strictly controlled to ensure each day's five or six performances run on schedule. Participants must also be prepared to play in a wide variety of auditoriums en route to a national event, perhaps ranging from a few hundred to 1,000-plus seats — and hence they may have to adjust their play accordingly.

"Some people say that giving scores for theater and having winners and losers runs counter to the art form's spirit, but I think it simply encourages the students' interest," Tanaka said. "And why should it be bad in theater, but okay for music competitions?"

In addition, while noting that competitions help high school drama to reach a wider audience, Tanaka added, "Although it's impossible for everybody to always be happy about a result, it's important to make students realize that there are a variety of values and people have their own likes and dislikes. That way, they learn how to adjust their own ideas in the process of theater creation to make the best play they can."

Finally, returning to the upcoming Summit, Hayashi added that a key aim of the event is to bridge the worlds of high school students and the general public. "Hence the word 'summit' doesn't mean 'the highest position,' but rather it's taken from the name of a supermarket chain," he explained.

"So we want people to casually drop into the theater to see some great plays, just as they would stop at a supermarket. For that reason it's only ¥1,500 to see one play, or ¥3,000 to see all three," he said — also beaming.

The fifth High School Drama Summit runs March 27-29 at the Komaba Agora Theatre in Tokyo. For details, call 03-3467-2743 or visit www.seinendan.org.