Tag - national-theatre

 
 

NATIONAL THEATRE

Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Mar 23, 2023
New Japanese playwrights shine on the London stage
A joint collaboration between the Royal Court Theatre and New National Theatre, Tokyo, brought the works of three up-and-coming dramatists to British audiences in January.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
May 23, 2019
Dancer Kaiji Moriyama celebrates ninja in his latest work
A creative yet shy child fascinated with origami and crafts, Kaiji Moriyama discovered dance late, at the age of 21 while a university student. He has certainly made up for the lost time, though. Just seven years since first studying the art form, he performed to rave reviews at the 2001 Edinburgh Festival Fringe in Scotland and was named "one of the year's most talented dancers." Moriyama followed his debut success with "Katana," a breakthrough original production, in New York in 2005.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jul 3, 2018
Keiko Miyata to mark departure from the New National Theatre, Tokyo, with piece by up-and-coming playwright
After eight years as artistic director for drama at the New National Theatre, Tokyo, Keiko Miyata, 60, is now tackling her final program there before passing the baton to 39-year-old Eriko Ogawa, who is set to become the theater's youngest-ever director in September.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
May 30, 2017
Finding the drama without words
"Not everything can be explained in words. Everyone draws a different nuance from the word 'love,' for example," says 50-year-old Shuji Onodera. "Yet through dance I've discovered a special beauty beyond words."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Feb 23, 2016
Zainichi dramas delve into Japan's shadows
“At last, the masterpiece 'Yakiniku Dragon' ('Korean Barbecue Dragon') is going to be staged again!"
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Aug 20, 2015
Shun Oguri faces off with an artistic master in 'Red'
'If it's possible, I'd like to act live on stage at least once a year," says film and television star Shun Oguri following an intensive rehearsal at a small studio in central Tokyo.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jan 1, 2015
Curtains up on 2015
Innovation adds sparkle to traditional forms
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Sep 25, 2014
Maestro Taijiro Iimori will mark his NNTT debut with Wagner's 'Parsifal'
The New National Theatre, Tokyo, will open its 2014-15 season with "Parsifal," the last completed opera by German composer Richard Wagner (1813-83). While opera fans will no doubt be thrilled at the long-awaited performance of this piece at the theater, they can expect an additional treat as Taijiro Iimori makes his debut as NNTT's new artistic director of opera, conducting the piece himself.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jun 11, 2014
David Bintley bows out with a 'Pagoda' set in Japan
Challenge is intrinsic to artistic creation, but David Bintley relishes it so much that he specializes in conceiving the unlikely.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
May 21, 2014
Shirai triumphs with 'The Tempest'
"I'd like 'The Tempest' I am creating to be on the smallest scale ever, but as it's a very spacious stage at the New National Theatre, Tokyo, it won't have the most compact set. Nonetheless, I will try to present it as stories from within the confines of one man's memory."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Feb 19, 2014
NNTT debut peers behind the masks of 'Condemned' Sartre family
Until Japan was opened to the West in the mid-19th century, its theater culture mainly comprised traditional forms such as kabuki, comic kyōgen, bunraku (puppet theater) and noh.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Feb 4, 2014
First female conductor at NNTT performs 'Madama Butterfly'
Japanese audiences, especially women, may have mixed feelings about Giacomo Puccini's opera "Madama Butterfly."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jan 15, 2014
This special Horse Year kabuki's a real winner
Most kabuki plays have at their core a dramatic historical episode. Around this, there's generally a colorful, oft-times melodramatic and action-packed confection of intrigues, loyalties, romances, self-sacrifice and villainy founded on varying degrees of fact — or simply fashioned as pure fiction.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Dec 25, 2013
Maestro steers bunraku classic to its happy end
For its last bunraku offering of the year, the National Theatre in Tokyo's central Hanzomon district staged two plays to great acclaim between Dec. 4-16: "Otonomiya Asahi no Yoroi" and "Koimusume Mukashi Hachijo."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Nov 6, 2013
Wrestling with Verdi's 'foul truth'
Women wearing flashy East-meets-West dresses and men in dark suits frolic drunkenly in a hotel lounge. Behind them can be seen the ends of the hallways for each floor of guest rooms. Couples slip away from the group from time to time, disappear down a hallway and into a room. The whole set is a cylindrical construction that rotates slowly all the time, so displaying all the sides of life laid bare therein.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Oct 23, 2013
Passions and pathos
Back in 1751, the haunting power and harrowing sadness of a new five-act bunraku (puppet) play by Namiki Sosuke titled "Ichi-no-tani Futaba Gunki" (Chronicle of the Battle of Ichi-no-tani)" made it such a hit among the masses that, within a year, a kabuki version was being staged in Osaka and Edo (present-day Tokyo).
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Oct 16, 2013
'Edward II': The director's take
Two years ago, Shintaro Mori made his directorial debut at the New National Theatre, Tokyo, with a minimalist production of Samuel Beckett's absurdist masterpiece "Waiting for Godot." Now, at age 37, he's back there at the helm of probably one of the West's first-ever plays with an openly gay theme — the rarely staged classic, "Edward II," by Christopher Marlowe (1564-93).
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Apr 11, 2013
Welsh approach to 'national' theater is efficiently different
Always keen to break new ground, Keiko Miyata, artistic director of the New National Theatre Tokyo (NNTT), has created a series titled "With: linking theater" as the centerpiece of this season's program. In this, she has lined up three appetizing collaborations by asking playwrights from Wales, South Korea and Germany to create new works to be staged in Japanese at the NNTT with Japanese actors.

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