“For decades, many people involved in the arts — including producers, creators, administrators and academics — were pointing to the need for an overall arts-policy body in Tokyo, and finally Arts Council Tokyo came into being in November 2012,” its program director, Yuko Ishiwata, noted with some satisfaction. But in ...
Arts Council England, generally referred to as the Arts Council, is a national agency which, in its own words, “champions, ...
Noh is a performing art originally developed by and for the samurai class that has continued without a break for ...
I had a few reservations about the first Japanese production of “In the Heights,” the Broadway sensation nominated for 13 Tony awards in 2008. For one, neither of the female leads playing Nina and Vanessa seemed to have much musical-theater experience. I also wondered ...
If the Kennedys could be said to be American royalty, then the famed Addams family would surely be satirical pretenders to their antithesis. Gothic, seemingly immortal and nothing if not weird, this wacky clan with a taste for the creatively macabre first appeared in ...
April 13 is a big day for theatergoers in Tokyo, as it sees the world premiere of “Lady Bess,” a musical by the world-renowned team of German writer Michael Kunze and Hungarian composer Sylvester Levay, with famed hit-maker Shuichiro Koike directing. Considering the play ...
Although ballet-goers in Japan tend to prefer narrative works, the trio of edgy and abstract pieces from the 20th century to the present showcased last week by the New National Theatre Ballet (NNTB) may well have some revising their preferences. Titled “Symphony in Three ...
“It’s f-cking amazing! I don’t know what else to say. I’m really happy and really moved and I’m so humble about that.” One of the most influential, magnetic — and busy — English playwrights at work today, 43-year-old Simon Stephens opened his round eyes ...
This year is set to be a good one for English theater in Japan, from Shakespearean comedy to original works, from intimate black-box stagings to a rock’n'roll musical. It’s not Tokyo or even Osaka serving up this feast, though — but Nagoya, which is ...
It’s 9:15 on a cold and rainy Saturday morning, and Wendell Harrison is running late. “The one day I send an email telling them not to be late, and I’m the one having problems,” he laments. Harrison’s doing double duty at the moment: directing ...
“Some years ago at Black Stripe Theatre in Tokyo, we did a reading of Harold Pinter’s one-act play ‘One for the Road,’ and I have ever since wanted to put it on. “Back then, I was asked to take the part of Nicolas (an ...
Based on “Le Fantôme de l’Opéra,” a 1911 novel by the French author of detective fiction, Gaston Leroux, and transformed into a musical composed, co-written and produced by Englishman Andrew Lloyd Webber (now Baron Lloyd-Webber), “The Phantom of the Opera” was first produced in ...
Audiences at the National Theatre of Japan might be excused for indulging in a little time travel this month as they feast their senses on prime morsels of “Musume Gonomi Ukina no Yokogushi,” a masterwork by Kawatake Mokuami first served up at the Moritaza ...
To watch “Kontakthof,” Pina Bausch’s masterpiece of dance theater, is to be like a voyeur peering from behind a one-way mirror into the everyday battlefield of male-female interaction. The dancers, too, seem to treat the audience as a mirror, slicking back hair, adjusting bra ...
“We always start creating our next work by having a meeting with everyone involved in the drama club,” high school teacher Michiko Ishii explained. “We discuss what is actually happening around us and what we should focus on in the next play. So, what ...
