Vol. 88 Updated Apr. 30, 2013  |
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 Playwright and director Kenji Higashi is the leader of the theater company Gekidan Sajiki Douji. His plays use the power of group performances and sordid but elaborate stage design in spaces like warehouses to depict people living in delusion at the lower depths of society. The impact of his plays set in places like the coal-mining town where he was born or the small village in the mountains where he was raised is unique on today’s theater scene in Japan. In this interview we seek some of the origins of the art of this playwright who has garnered so much attention today as winner of the 47th Kinokuniya Theater Prize individual artist award, the 20th Yomiuri Theater Awards Best Director Prize and the 16th Tsuruya Namboku Memorial Drama Award. |
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 Two years have passed since the devastating Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami of March 11, 2011. Today there are folk arts of the region that are bringing inspiration and courage to the people of the stricken areas. One of them is Kuromori Kagura, a precious tradition of ritual dance and music officially recognized as an Important Intangible Folk Cultural Asset and performed by practitioners who travel from village to village over a wide area of the Sanriku coast of Northeastern Japan as a form of spiritual pilgrimage. To learn about the current state of Kuromori Kagura and its preservation, we spoke with Hiroki Tanaka, leader of the youth league of Kagura performers. |
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 After leading Japan’s contemporary dance world since its nascent period with her dance company Leni-Basso, Akiko Kitamura suspended activities the group in 2009 to pursue other projects. Drawn to Indonesian culture after her encounter with the country’s traditional martial arts form Pencak Silat, her ongoing research eventually led to an international collaboration with Indonesian artists that produced the new work “To Belong - dialogue,” which premiered in 2012. Kitamura talks about her collaborative work Indonesian artists and its place in her life work in a 3-hour interview. |
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Mark Murphy is known as the father of the On the Boards theater in Seattle where he served as artistic director from 1988 to 2001 and made it the performance venue for introducing many overseas contemporary performing artists to the American audience. Today he serves as first executive director of REDCAT (Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater), a facility operating in a tie-up with California Institute of the Arts. In this interview Murphy speaks about On the Boards and his new work at REDCAT. |
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With a population of about 4.5 million, Ireland is by no means a large country, but it does have one quite active base of contemporary dance in the dance house named Dance Ireland. Its artistic program manager is Elisabetta Bisaro, who comes to Ireland from Italy. In this interview we hear her views on the little-known world of Irish contemporary dance, the organization’s network with the EU and how artists are being supported and nurtured in Ireland today. |
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In 2008, the Republic of Korea’s capital of Seoul launched a program called “Seoul Art Space” with the purpose of renovating public facilities and sites such as unused factory buildings in the city for use as community bases for the arts and culture. Among these art spaces, the center of much attention today is the Mullae Arts Village, which was opened in an area of old ironwork shops that artists had come to live in. In this interview we speak with the manager of Mullae Arts Village, Suh Myung-Gu, who hopes to make it a next-generation arts support base where artists and the local community come together to generate new arts and culture. |
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National Theatre Wales (NTW) has launched on a new course in theater that has no theater facility to base its activities in but instead engages local communities in site-specific projects at such venues as libraries, military bases and coalmines. It has created an online community with its website to conduct activities as a “theatre without walls.” This interview with artistic director John McGrath explores this unique undertaking. |
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This play is the third of the Mizu (Water) trilogy that is one of the representative works of Tomoyuki Nagayama and his company Kofuku Gekijo. It follows “Mizu wo Meguru” (2008) dealing with the desires of people who travel to a natural spring; and “Mizu wo Meguru 2” (premiered 2010) that depicts the journey of a woman in search of a sea to scatter the ashes of her deceased husband in. “Mizu wo Meguru 3” tells of a journey in search of the memories harbored in a river in a fable-like style. |
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This is a play born in collaboration with the playwright workshop program of the Setagaya Public Theatre in Tokyo. The story is about the Kamiyama family of four who run a small factory in regional town named Kanawa. The eldest son, Kiyotake is in training to take over the family factory and his talented younger brother Kiyomi works at a general trading company. After Kiyomi is removed from his job assignment after suffering an injury, the family is made a fool of by their preposterous uncle Reiji, who, while working as a househusband, is pursuing his important “mission” of maintaining the balance of the world. |
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This play is a representative work of Kenji Higashi, the leader of the theater company Gekidan Sajiki Douji. It is the winner of a trio of awards, in the 47th Kinokuniya Theater Prize individual artist award, the 20th Yomiuri Theater Awards Best Director Prize and the 16th Tsuruya Namboku Memorial Drama Award. The play portrays the failure of a coal mining company that had attempted to build a Utopia, while also telling the story of Hajime, the sickly son of the mine owner who is led by a retarded child he calls “Kami-sama” (Holy Deity) to launch a fantasy locomotive in the “Sea of Tears” that lies beneath the mine. |
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EACEA was established in 2006 as an agency responsible for the management of certain parts of the EU’s cultural programs. It operates under the supervision of its three parent Directorates-General of the European Commission: Education and Culture (DG EAC), Communication (DG COMM) and EuropeAid Development and Cooperation (DG DEVCO). Its programs aim to provide support in education, culture and the audiovisual field. |
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Based on the campus of the University of Leuven (KU Leuven), STUK is one of Belgium’s leading arts support NPOs. Its predecessor was “’t Stuc,” a student organization founded in the latter half of the 1970s to run an arts center. In 2001, it merged with the international contemporary dance festival KLAPSTUK to form a new organization named STUK. In 2002, after major renovation of its current building, STUK opened as a well-equipped comprehensive arts center where residencies and other programs are now held. |
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Established as a government agency named the Korea Culture and Arts Foundation in 1973, the organization was later restructured by a committee of private sector specialists as the Arts Council Korea in August of 2005. Led by a committee of 10 professionals in the various areas of the arts, the Council makes proposals on arts and culture policy, operates support programs for the arts and international exchange, arts welfare programs and community programs, as well as operating arts and culture facilities. The organization operates on an annual budget of approximately 400 billion Korean won (2010 status). |
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Un Yamada is an artist who uses music, art, literature, fashion, gender and the varied bodies of people with no dance experience as resources for creating dance that is rich in wit. In 2013 she undertakes a dance work recreating impressions from the highly experimental book “Dictee” by Korean-American artist Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, a company work using Stravinsky’s ballet music “The Rite of Spring” and a collaboration with Rosas artist Fumiyo Ikeda among other things that combine to bring expectations for new developments in Yamada’s career. In this interview we explore the dance world that Yamada has created and the paths she has walked in the ongoing interaction with the connective tissue rheumatic disease that afflicts her.
