This paper was submitted to the Degenerative Times and Generative Places: Performance and VR Working Group at ASTR, which took place on the 31st of October 2025. Abstract In these times of technological profligacy and societal disarray, Japan’s shōgekijō theatre persists as a site for rethinking community, intimacy, and testimony. This paper traces the migration of shōgekijō (Little…
Category: Conference Papers
Phantoms in third space: on the ethics of audience-performer spatial relations in two VR dance works by Yui Kawaguchi
Paper given at the International Federation for Theatre Research (IFTR) conference as part of the Intermediality and Performance working group at the University of Koln, on 11 June 2025. Abstract This paper questions the ethics of audience-performer spatial relations in two VR dance works by Berlin based choreographer, Yui Kawaguchi: Be thou still with me…
Yuriwaka VR: an EFL odyssey into in/completeness, in/equality, and multimodal mis/performance
Paper given at the International Association of Performing Language (IAPL) 9th Conference on 13 October 2024 at the Professional College of Arts and Tourism (Toyooka City, Hyogo Prefecture, Japan). Abstract: In the spring of 2024, I proposed to students in my research seminar to work on the translation and adaptation of a folktale called Yuriwaka…
Premonitions from the Past / Hauntings from the Future / Performance Experiments in Kyoto
Paper given online at the International Federation for Theatre Research Conference, Galway, July 16 2021. Abstract Kyoto’s annual international performing arts festival, Kyoto Experiment (KEX), marked its tenth anniversary in October 2019 and with it the end of a decade-long run for festival founder and director Yusuke Hashimoto. The 2020 edition of the festival, led…
Learning to linger: on memory & migration in Eiko Otake’s movement art
Paper given at the Contemporary Japanese Theatre Workshop, Deutsches Institut für Japanstudien, in Tokyo, July 27, 2019. This paper is part of a larger research project, co-conducted with Mika Eglinton, called “Japanese Women on the Move: Migration, Memory and Gender in Contemporary Performance.” The project draws on in-depth interviews with internationally renowned practitioners from Japan…
Learner autonomy and applied theatre in the ESL classroom
Paper given at the ILA Conference on Learner Autonomy at Konan Women’s University, September 5th — September 8th, 2018. Abstract In their analysis of autonomy in the educational philosophy of Paulo Freire, Nicolaides and Fernandes (2008) outline two broad strands in the theory and practice of learner autonomy in education. The first follows Henri Holec’s…
Dwelling on the Documentary Body in Takuya Murakawa’s “Independent Living”
Paper given at the International Federation for Theatre Research Conference (IFTR) in Belgrade, July 12, 2018, as part of the Choreography and Corporeality Working Group. The premise behind Takuya Murakawa’s “Independent Living” 2017, is deceptively simple. An audience member is invited to play the role of a patient. S/he is instructed to lie in silence…
Mourning in, as and for the Theatre: the case of Ishinha’s Amahara
Paper given at the 15th International European Association of Japanese Studies Conference, at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal. 31 August 2017. Abstract Performing on deserted beaches, and in villages, temples, dockland warehouses and urban railyards, few theatre companies have traversed the range of landscapes and settings that inspired the Osaka-based Ishinha. Yet though journeys…
Is all the World Still a Stage? Shakespeare and ESL in Higher Education in Japan
Roundtable panel discussion, part of the Japanese Society for Theatre Research Conference held at Kyoto Sangyo University, December 3-4 2016. Panel rationale Student-led productions of Shakespeare were a common feature in post-war Japanese universities. Shakespeare was still widely seen as the centre of the western literary canon, and English literature departments took pride in…
In Search of Direction: Mapping, Materiality and Theatre Ecology in Rural Japan
Paper given at the IFTR 2016 Conference at the University of Stockholm, Sweden. Abstract For the past forty-five years, Yukichi Matsumoto and the Osaka-based Ishinha theatre company have been creating site-specific performances that explore the intersection of urban and rural life in Japan. The company’s most recent work, “Twilight” (2015), was devised in Soni Village,…
Andrew Eglinton 