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. Now, nearly 100 groups of senior-citizen actors can be seen across the country, ...
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. "Many people say they liked being in their teens the best, but now my springtime has arrived. Mentally, I'm at the peak of my enthusiasm," he tells The Japan Times at a rehearsal studio ...
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. "To start ...
The Japan Times newsroom selected these culture stories as the most important of 2016. 1. Nothing lasts forever: After conflicting reports dominated tabloids, J-pop act SMAP finally announced a breakup planned for New Year's Eve. Regardless of whether it was in-fighting or exhaustion that led ...
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. In Japan, as is par for the five-ringed sporting circus, 2020's upcoming Tokyo Olympics have been beset ...
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. "When I saw an advert in April inviting anyone aged 60 or older to audition for a new project called 10,000 Gold ...
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 ...
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, ...
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. Following his debut as a theater director in 1969, the native of Saitama ...
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 ...
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 ...
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. In Japan, other than Yukio Ninagawa's all-male 2012 production, whose spectacular and ...
