Writing
Playwright, theater director, and academic.
Saori is a high school student at a provincial city. She is a member of playgroup at her school. Yoshioka begins to work at the same high school as a new teacher. Yoshioka performed in plays when she was in college back in Tokyo. Saori, Yukko, Garuru, Nakanishi, Akemi decides to compete in a play competition. Their goal is to make it through the regional competions, but Teacher Yoshioka tells them their aiming low and that they should think about the national competition.
Yoriko, an artist living in rural Nagi, is haunted by a former love affair she cannot bear to mourn. When Yuri, a recently separated architect, travels from Tokyo to visit her friend and former sister-in-law, both women find themselves at a crossroad, each searching for ways to let go of the past and define their identities. Yuri's brief escape from the city settles into a quiet confrontation of loss and probing for the two women in bucolic Nagi.
The world's first human-android acting duo, called Android Theater Project, is the collaborative brainchild of noted Japanese playwright Oriza Hirata and the leading robotics scientist Hiroshi Ishiguro. "Sayonara" is a remakable android play and has been adapted to feature film by the acclaimed filmmaker Koji Fukada (Hospitalité, Au revoir l’été). In this film project the setting of the story is largely expanded, depicting time and space in a way which can only be achieved in film, examining life and death though the communication between dying human and immortal android.
Oriza Hirata is Japan's leading playwright and director, who runs his own theatrical company, Seinendan. Theatre 2 (Observational Film Series #4) examines the dynamic relationship between theatre and the society through depicting Hirata's activities. In order for his art and his not-so-commercial company to survive this highly capitalistic modern society, what kind of strategy does Hirata have and practice?
'Human Comedy in Tokyo', describes ordinary everyday lives without any significant incidents. Various dialogues are elaborately woven to bring tiny splits in human relationships to light, and through the three episodes the characters have their moments of realizing that they are actually in solitude.
A 1998 performance of Oriza Hirata's play set in a Tokyo museum sheltering paintings evacuated from a European war, where family and friends trade quiet conversations that reveal loneliness, love, and social unease, amid growing tensions.
In this black comedy the lives of a timid small-time printer and his young wife are turned inside out by the arrival of a stranger who moves in and takes over their world. Set in a village-like outpost in the heart of Tokyo, this is a wry commentary on Japanese xenophobia. Kiki Sugino heads a spritely ensemble cast.
A filmed performance of the January 2016 world premiere production of Toshio Hosokawa's opera dedicated to the victims of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami.
Theatre 1 (Observational Film Series #3) is a feature length documentary, which closely depicts the world of Oriza Hirata, Japan's leading playwright and director, and his theatrical company, Seinendan. By depicting them, the film leads the audience to revisit fundamental but timely questions: What is theatre? Why do human beings act?
Just before the end of World War II, the Yalta Conference was held by the “Big Three” Allied leaders: Franklin Delano Roosevelt of the United States, Winston Churchill of Britain, and Joseph Stalin of the USSR. Japanese theater company Seinendan reimagines their conversations about postwar rule and power as a darkly humorous satire.
