Tag - yukio-ninagawa

 
 

YUKIO NINAGAWA

Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Dec 16, 2021
Saitama Gold Theater players take their final bow after 15 years
The theater troupe, founded in 2006 by Yukio Ninagawa with a cast of actors aged 55 and over, will bid farewell with Shogo Ota's nonverbal 1981 masterpiece, “Mizu no Eki.”
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Sep 20, 2018
Golden oldies: A Saitama theater festival for elderly actors welcomes seniors from around the world
Renowned theater director Yukio Ninagawa broke new ground when he launched Saitama Gold Theater in 2006. Instead of seasoned actors, he filled his troupe with amateurs who were all older than 55.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
May 11, 2017
Director Shuntaro Fujita enters the spring of his career with 'Danny and the Deep Blue Sea'
At 37, director Shuntaro Fujita says he's just hitting his prime.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jan 24, 2017
Kimura's crazed 'Macbeth' for today
"When I was studying English literature at the University of Tokyo, even though I had no theater experience at all, I got the chance to direct 'Macbeth,' " 33-year-old Ryunosuke Kimura explained when we met recently at a rehearsal studio in downtown Tokyo.
Japan Times
CULTURE
Dec 30, 2016
The top entertainment stories of 2016
The Japan Times newsroom selected these culture stories as the most important of 2016.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Dec 27, 2016
Take your pick of the year's highlights in Japanese theater
From soccer minnows Leicester City winning the English Premier League to "That Election" in the (dis)-United States, 2016 has been a year of surprises, shocks and new directions.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Nov 24, 2016
A golden age of theater for Japan's seniors
At the age of 91, Saitama resident Izumi Noguchi is speaking at his first press conference — at least as an actor anyway.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Nov 22, 2016
Spirit of Ninagawa and Shakespeare strong in Takahiro Fujita's daring take on 'Romeo and Juliet'
Takahiro Fujita was really looking forward to the new year in 2016. He'd already been honored when dramatist supreme Yukio Ninagawa asked him to write a play for him to direct. Now, they were each set to stage separate versions of "Nina's Cotton," that new work inspired by the life of Japan's worldwide theater icon.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
May 13, 2016
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.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Entertainment news
May 12, 2016
Renowned Japanese stage director Yukio Ninagawa dies at 80
Stage director Yukio Ninagawa, renowned worldwide for his interpretations of plays by William Shakespeare and Greek tragedies, died Thursday of multiple organ failure caused by pneumonia, theater sources said. He was 80.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Apr 26, 2016
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 Tokyo from May 6-31.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Dec 22, 2015
Plenty of food for thought in a good year for great plays
The year now ending began gloomily with the Charlie Hebdo murders in Paris reminding us of hopeless breakdowns in mutual understanding and tolerance worldwide; now it's set to close hot on the heels of an agreement by nearly 200 countries at the COP21 talks in Paris on the need to counter threatened apocalyptic levels of climate change due to global warming.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jul 21, 2015
New 'Troilus and Cressida' looks like it's making history
Renowned as a problem play due to its tangled ambiguities and a storyline that cries out for a catharsis, "Troilus and Cressida" is among the most rarely staged of William Shakespeare's 37 plays.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jun 23, 2015
Young British directors take Tokyo by storm — but why?
This year it's quite noticeable how many non-Japanese are directing plays in Tokyo — not frequent and famed visitors such as David Leveaux, Robert Lepage and Simon McBurney, but relative unknowns here making their debuts at two leading large commercial theaters that almost always feature Japanese dramatists.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
May 2, 2015
Dramatist brings citizens of all ages together
Public theaters across the country are holding significantly more community productions and workshops aimed at local residents who are looking to get involved in performance art.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Apr 28, 2015
Orpheus descends on Japan
Of all U.S. playwright Tennessee Williams's many major works — including "A Streetcar Named Desire" and "The Glass Menagerie" — "Orpheus Descending," which opens in Tokyo next week with a star-studded Japanese cast and multi-award-winning English director Phillip Breen at the helm, is among those most rarely staged anywhere.
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Feb 13, 2015
Saitama Gold Theater Company; Aum Shinrikyo sarin attack anniversary; CM of the week: Takarakuji
The Saitama Gold Theater Company, supervised by Japan's most famous theater director, Yukio Ninagawa, is made up of seniors — average age 75 — who were stage amateurs before they auditioned for the troupe. Now they play to thousands of paying customers every year, even overseas.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Feb 4, 2015
Ninagawa still exploring in eighth take on 'Hamlet'
Yukio Ninagawa's "cherry-blossom" staging of "Macbeth" at the Edinburgh Festival in 1985, with actors in that famously Scottish play sporting kimono rather than kilts, was a sensation due to its radical reimagining of so revered a work.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Oct 29, 2014
High drama at Festival/Tokyo
News in March that 38-year-old Chiaki Soma had suddenly been removed from the post of program director of Festival/Tokyo, which she had held since it started in 2009, set many theater lovers worrying about the future of the flagship drama event whose stature at home and abroad had only grown with her at the helm.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Dec 18, 2013
Show marks award of kabuki star's new name
Names matter, and in the realm of Japanese culture almost nowhere more than in kabuki, one of whose top names, Ennosuke IV, has just become artistic director of the Shunju-za theater in Kyoto.

Longform

Later this month, author Shogo Imamura will open Honmaru, a bookstore that allows other businesses to rent its shelves. It's part of a wave of ideas Japanese booksellers are trying to compete with online spaces.
The story isn't over for Japan's bookstores