Tag - theatre

 
Menu
Search
 
May 06, 2024
 

Today's print edition

Home Delivery
Subscribe for more access

THEATRE

Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jan 22, 2014
The Onodera enigma
The name of the late great Pina Bausch's acclaimed Tanztheater in the German city of Wuppertal may translate as "Dancetheater," but its works often owe more to abstract emotional action and snatched dialogue than to dance. Over in London, meanwhile, Simon McBurney's Complicite company has long been at the cutting edge of physical theater — so much so that its works have profoundly influenced the nation's erstwhile style of speech-focused drama oft-ridiculed for its "actors who only move from the neck up."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jan 22, 2014
Komanosuke Takemoto: a rare voice of tradition
The traditional performing art of bunraku (ningyō jōruri) involves three puppeteers together operating a cast of single puppets, with a gidayū bushi to the side comprising a story-teller (tayū) and a shamisen player (shamisen- hiki) seated on a round platform (yuka).
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
Jan 8, 2014
Jo Kanamori talks dance in Japan
A15-minute drive from Niigata Station, just across the mighty Shinano River pouring into the sea from the Northern Alps, a massive oval-shaped hall sits amid rich green parkland. This is Niigata City Performing Arts Center, aka Ryutopia — the nation's only public theater with a resident dance company.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Dec 25, 2013
Top billings of 2013
Although all Japan's 50 reactors have been shut down since September, cleaning up in the wake of the March 2011 meltdowns at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant is making very slow progress and tens of thousands of people still live in temporary accommodation or are internally displaced. In addition, every day irradiated water from the site is flowing into the Pacific.
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
Dec 11, 2013
'Don Quixote' as never before
Paris comes to Tokyo this week with a production from the Théâtre National de Chaillot of a "choreographic essay" by José Montalvo, one of its artistic directors. Featuring 13 dancers and Patrice Thibaud, an actor routinely dubbed a genius, the premiere of "Don Quichotte du Trocadéro" in January met with extraordinary acclaim. Since then, this version of "Don Quixote" has toured in France, Germany, Italy, England — and to Edinburgh, where it wowed the world's largest art festival.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Dec 4, 2013
Bunraku storyteller speaks out
During the early part of the Edo Period, when Japan was ruled by Tokugawa shoguns from 1603-1867, Osaka — the main city in the Kansai region of western Honshu — thrived as the country's cultural and economic center. It was during those heady days around 400 years ago that a kind of puppetry called ningyō jōruri was born — a performance art, now commonly known as bunraku, that was designated by UNESCO in 2003 as a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Nov 20, 2013
Director Ogawa sublimely cracks Mamet's code
First impressions can, of course, be deceiving, but mine of 65-year-old David Mamet's play "The Cryptogram," whose world premiere was at the Ambassadors Theatre in London in 1994, was simply how unhelpful and knotty a work it was.
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.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives
Mar 16, 2013
Fabric artist clothes Tokyo's expat thespians with creativity and magic
Today's younger generation may be more used to getting their entertainment from the Internet or other high-tech sources than from the stage, but nothing can perhaps replace the magic of a live theater performance.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Mar 8, 2013
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?
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Feb 8, 2013
Theater groups play together
Fresh from a U.S. tour, "Zero Cost House," the first international collaboration work between Yokohama's Chelfitsch company and Philadelphia's Pig Iron Theatre Company (PITC), opens at Kanagawa Arts Theatre next week with its original U.S. cast.
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Feb 1, 2013
Cirque offshoot 7 Fingers has lofty ambitions
Since first touring its native province of Quebec in 1984, the self-styled "multifaceted creative force" that is Canada's Cirque du Soleil has become a major global phenomenon with several permanent venues.
Japan says Biden's description of nation as xenophobic is 'unfortunate'
The National Diet building in Tokyo
G7 eyes plan on U.S.-led $50 billion aid package for Ukraine
A local resident visits the Lychakiv cemetery in Lviv, Ukraine, on Thursday. The U.S. is in talks with close partners to lead a group of allies that would give as much as $50 billion in aid to Ukraine.
Japan drops to 70th in press freedom rankings
A businessman reads a newspaper outside a train station in Tokyo.
Japan’s record-low children population weighs on growth
The number of children 14 years old or younger fell for the 43rd straight year to around 14.01 million as of April 1.
Biden calls ally Japan ‘xenophobic’ along with rivals China and Russia
U.S. President Joe Biden speaks in Syracuse, New York, on April 25.
'Monster' Inoue ready to tear down Luis Nery in title defense at Tokyo Dome
Naoya Inoue (left) and Luis Nery following a pre-fight news conference in Yokohama on Saturday, two days ahead of their super bantamweight title fight.
Debate on constitutional revision at a standstill despite Kishida's pledges
With less than two months left before the conclusion of the current session of parliament, any possibility that Prime Minister Fumio Kishida can deliver constitutional reform before the end of his term as Liberal Democratic Party president in late September, as he has promised, appears remote.
Sapporo court ruling on Ainu fishing rights presents tough questions
A traditional Ainu preserved food called <i>satchep</i> (dried fish) being made at the government-run National Ainu Museum and Park, nicknamed Upopoy, in the town of Shiraoi, Hokkaido, on Dec. 25. The Sapporo District Court ruled last month that the Raporo Ainu Nation's rights as an Indigenous people did not extend to having an inherent right to fish for commercial reasons.
With eye on China, defense chiefs agree to bolster interoperability
From left: U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, Australian defense chief Richard Marles, Japanese Defense Minister Minoru Kihara and Philippine Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro hold a joint news conference in Honolulu on Thursday.
Yellow sand allergy: A health issue made worse by climate change
A screenshot of the Meteorological Agency's satellite image of clouds and yellow sand (in pink) on Sunday.

Podcast

From easily navigable train stations to the helpfulness of its municipal staff, Tokyo has earned high praise for its commitment to accessibility for disabled travelers.
[Rebroadcast] Japan is doing better on accessibility than you may think

Longform

Rows of irises resemble a rice field at the Peter Walker-designed Toyota Municipal Museum of Art.
The 'outsiders' creating some of Japan's greenest spaces
By Stephen Mansfield

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Vol. 35: Travel in time — and stay there
Vol. 35: Travel in time — and stay there

SPECIAL SUPPLEMENTS note

Read more

SUPPLEMENTS BINDER