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…

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Theatre Review: The Winter’s Tale dir. Satoshi Miyagi

Review of The Winter’s Tale, dir. by Satoshi Miyagi at the Shizuoka Performing Arts Centre, Shizuoka, 11 February 2017. Published in Shakespeare Studies, Vol 55, 2017. Pp. 47-50. Production trailer Time lapse video of the stage construction for The Winter’s Tale

Dance in Asia 2018 – A radical retelling of the Tale of Genji

This article was originally published in the Japan Times newspaper on February 20 2018. How do you make a thousand-year-old story resonate with an audience in Osaka today? Tell them that you plan to radically modernize one of the most famous literary works ever to come out of Japan to fit present concerns. The centerpiece…

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Profile on Berlin-based visual and performance artist, Naoko Tanaka

This article was originally published in the Japan Times newspaper on January 13 2018. A spotlight shines on a miniature primary school chair. Its steel frame is crumpled like a child’s body cowering in fear. Soon, other chairs of differing sizes come into view, lit by a solitary woman, who crawls among them with a…

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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…

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Profile on New York-based Dancer, Choreographer and Educator, Eiko Otake

This article was originally published in the Japan Times newspaper on June 18 2017. ‘Move to rest, sleep, and dream. Move to pass time, bloom, and linger.” These are the opening lines of Eiko Otake’s “Delicious Movement Manifesto.” Otake is a multi-award winning, New York-based Asian-American performance artist whose passion for dance began almost 50 years ago…

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The Ventriloquists Convention

This article was originally published in the Japan Times Newspaper on April 27 2017. Franco-Austrian choreographer and director Gisele Vienne is fascinated by puppets and brings a group of nine ventriloquists and their marionettes to the stage in her latest piece, “The Ventriloquists Convention.” The play is part of the World Theatre Festival Shizuoka run…

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Tokyo Theater Commons and Tokyo Performing Arts Meeting

This article was originally published in the Japan Times Newspaper on January 24, 2017. A bonanza is brewing in Tokyo and Yokohama for lovers of cross-cultural contemporary theater. That’s because, from Jan. 25 to Feb. 5, the capital’s Minato Ward hosts a new performance and workshop program named Theater Commons Tokyo. Meanwhile Yokohama’s Naka Ward…

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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…

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