Stage

When Akira Shirai first read the script for "Ballyturk," he quickly understood why its creator, Irish playwright Enda Walsh, said the work "should bypass the intellect and go straight into your bones." The 60-year-old artistic director at Kanagawa Arts Theatre in Yokohama was mulling over ...

A new play based on the abduction of Japanese citizens to North Korea has been captivating and educating audiences at the National Theatre in London. "The Great Wave," which tells the fictional story of one family's fight to find out what happened to their missing ...

There are mutual squeals of delight when Belgian dance artist Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Spanish flamenco dancer Maria Pages are reunited after "far too long" at a Tokyo rehearsal studio. Pages, 54, has flown in from Madrid to promote the pair's 2009 work "Dunas" ("Dunes"), ...

Following a January press conference in which the New National Theatre, Tokyo, announced that Dairakudakan, one of the world's leading butoh companies, would be staging two performances of "Tsumi to Batsu" ("Crime and Punishment") in March, troupe founder Akaji Maro delivered a triumphant statement. "Having ...

Noh performer Hisa Uzawa has spent her life devoted to an art form that — with its slow and steady movements, sparse staging and ancient chanting — may at first seem staid. In her hands, however, the 650-year-old tradition becomes relentlessly contemporary. Uzawa was born ...

Artists have long mined older works to create new forms of expression, just look at the continuing relevance of Shakespeare's stories. Among the oldest surviving performing arts of Japan, noh has been a source of inspiration for many in Japan. Combining narrative chanting, slow movements ...

In the world of Japanese contemporary drama, the action often takes place offstage as well as on. A case in point is what happened to Chiaki Soma, the program director at Festival/Tokyo from 2009-13, who is the main force behind the Theater Commons Tokyo festival, ...

How do you make a thousand-year-old story resonate with an audience in Osaka today? Tell them that you plan to radically modernize one of the most famous literary works ever to come out of Japan to fit present concerns. The centerpiece of "Asia.ai" is an ...

Back in 1995, some of the movers and shakers of the domestic theater scene got together at various venues around the capital for an event called the Tokyo Performing Arts Market. The aim was simple: connect up-and-coming Japanese artists to the producers and theater ...

The challenge facing Kazufusa Hosho is one that many guardians of traditional Japanese art forms know well: ensuring the survival of a centuries-old culture by attracting new and younger audiences. The 32-year-old is a 20th-generation head of the Hosho Noh School, which is based in ...

At the start of each year the New National Theatre Tokyo holds a media event at which the artistic directors of its three departments covering opera, drama and dance (ballet and contemporary) outline their aims and announce the upcoming programs. This time there was ...

Controversial French choreographer lets the locals loose in 'Gala.'