'Q: A Night At The Kabuki': Giving a classic love story the Queen treatment
Hideki Noda's new play updates the story of 'Romeo and Juliet' and sets it to a soundtrack of songs from Queen's classic 1975 album, 'A Night at the Opera'
Japonismes 2018 seeks to break down cultural stereotypes
A stupendous full autumn moon, bright orange and fat, flashes intermittently between the nondescript high-rise flats and offices on the drive to Charles de Gaulle Airport. It's an apt and beautiful reminder of one of the events that we, a group of Tokyo-based editors ...
A 2010 play by Hideki Noda gets wry extra twists of English humor in 'One Green Bottle'
"One Green Bottle" is a new-ish work co-written by the renowned Japanese dramatist Hideki Noda and Will Sharpe, who shot to fame in Britain in 2016 with the comedy series "Flowers," which he wrote, directed and also starred in. The title of the play — ...
World was a stage for acclaimed theater director Yukio Ninagawa
Acclaimed stage director Yukio Ninagawa was a titan of global theater but his hand felt astonishingly fragile when I shook it in delight in 2012 after the world premiere of "Trojan Women," which brought together a remarkable ensemble of Japanese, Arab-Israeli and Jewish-Israeli actors. Ninagawa, ...
Young dramatists mark the Bard's anniversary in style
Hot on the heels of Hideki Noda's radical adaptation of "Richard III" being staged by Singaporean director Ong Ken Seng at Shizuoka Performing Arts Center from April 29 to May 1, another intriguing transformation of Shakespeare's Machiavellian king will follow at Theatre Fuusikaden in ...
Konan W.U. students set to mark 50 years of Shakespeare in English
In 1964, the late Polish theater scholar Jan Kott wrote "Shakespeare, Our Contemporary," an influential book that questioned the processes of producing Shakespeare in the here and now and whether the Bard's texts should serve as clues for an archeological dig to recover something ...
Noda's 'Egg' scrambles understanding
After his acclaimed French debut last year with "The Bee," news of Hideki Noda's return to the Theatre National de Chaillot in central Paris with his pop-war-and-Olympian extravaganza "Egg" created quite a buzz of anticipation. Premiered in 2012 at the Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre where Noda ...
2014: New horizons opened up in Japan's theater world
Looking back over the past 12 months in Japan's theater world, it's clear that one encouraging trend is a lessening of the capital's dominance. Contemporary drama in this country has long been centralized on Tokyo, where major theaters plan their programs far in advance, booking ...
Double-take for a new one-woman 'Tinkerbell'
Life is hard for Marcello Magni. Not only is he directing a production separately starring famed actress Tomoko Mariya and upcoming talent Kae Okumura, but the work, in Japanese, is also his brand-new version of an early play by his great friend — and ...
By popular demand, Shizuoka Performing Arts Center is set to stage a revival of "A Midsummer Night's Dream," its sell-out 2011 production adapted by contemporary theater paragon Hideki Noda and directed by its own artistic diector, Satoshi Miyagi. Back in April 2011, counter to the ...
One year on from arts world 'disaster'
It's Oct. 27 and the setting sun fades to darkness. A long line of people begins to form around Tsukiji Honganji Temple next to the world-famous fish market in central Tokyo. The scene recalls what happened there last year on Dec. 27, the funeral ...
Aspiring thespians get help in realizing dreams
If you had a son or daughter who announced they wanted to be a stage actor, whatever would you say to them? In Japan today, as in centuries past, this still remains a dreaded scenario for many "respectable" parents hoping to raise children who will ...
