Nobuko Tanaka - The Japan Times

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Nobuko Tanaka

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Nobuko Tanaka

Nobuko Tanaka is a stage writer who has regularly contributed contemporary theater and dance articles to The Japan Times since 2001. She also writes for several Japanese and overseas magazines and web sites. As a promoter, she takes Japanese artists to foreign theater festivals.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Stage

Jul 12, 2012

Public theater takes on a leading role

Once upon a time, Japanese contemporary theater shared the limelight with youth-cultural movements that were rocking the nation. Back then, in the late 1960s and '70s, the avant-garde works of the angura (underground) theater scene had such an affinity with the radical student movement that they often...

Japan Times

COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP

Jun 3, 2012

Koki Mitani: Japan's Mr. Comedy

Koki Mitani is far and away the nation's best-known dramatist. Although theater is quite a niche medium here, most people in Japan — whether male or female, young or not so young, Japanese or not — recognize his face, even if they couldn't name many of his works. Recently, indeed, I was amazed when...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Stage

Jun 1, 2012

Shizuoka eyes theatrical bridge over to Avignon

Stranger things have happened, and in the near future a vibrant cultural bridge across Eurasia may be built between the city of Shizuoka in the beautiful foothills of Mount Fuji, and ancient Avignon in the artists' mecca of Provence in the South of France.

Japan Times

LIFE / WEEK 3

May 20, 2012

'Alien' actress at home with a robot

Even today in the performing arts in Japan, gaijin (lit. "aliens"), as foreigners are called, are still often presented like something to be gawped at in a Victorian freak show.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Stage

May 17, 2012

There is trouble on Kafka's shore

Seventy-six-year-old theater director Yukio Ninagawa is famed and honored the world over for his magnificently visualized stagings of Shakespeare and Ancient Greek tragedies — as well as modern Japanese plays.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Stage

May 4, 2012

Monkeying around on the stage

Britain's longest-serving theater critic, Michael Billington of The Guardian newspaper, is famous for not lavishing praise on his subjects easily or often.

Japan Times

Events / Events Outside Tokyo

Apr 27, 2012

Acrobatic bicyclists to make Shizuoka a stage

If your Golden Week schedule isn't full yet, how about visiting a picturesque tea-growing district set against the backdrop of Mount Fuji and enjoying street theater performed by Italian artists?

Japan Times

CULTURE / Stage

Apr 12, 2012

Songha prepares for a Wilde John the Baptist

A year ago, Songha Cho changed his professional name to plain and simple Songha — explaining that there is no appropriate kanji for Cho, though there is for Songha. That problem, the third-generation Korean-Japanese said, is just one of many complications faced in daily life here by people with...

Japan Times

Events / Events Outside Tokyo

Mar 16, 2012

A modern take on American theater classic

SIS Company's new production of "The Glass Menagerie" by the U.S. playwright Tennessee Williams (1911-83) looks like a marriage made in theatrical heaven between one of Williams' masterpieces and an impressive cast.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Stage

Mar 15, 2012

Let the theater help you become as free as a bird

One day, William Tuckett's big sister decided that she wanted to take ballet classes. Soon after, Tuckett's mother realized that if both her children went to the class, she could have two hours free to herself. He may have had no choice attending classes at age 6, but the now world-renowned dancer and...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Stage

Feb 17, 2012

'TeZukA' animates the stage

Choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui is nutty about anime and manga. Speaking to him at a cafe in his native Antwerp, Cherkaoui drops all the right names into his conversation and gets as giddy as an otaku (obsessive) discussing Japanese pop culture.

Japan Times

Events / Events Outside Tokyo

Jan 20, 2012

Drawing up a performance without talk

Language can sometimes be an obstacle for non-Japanese wanting to enjoy arts performances in Japan. In South Korea, however, artists are getting around this problem with theater programs that don't use verbal elements.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Stage

Jan 20, 2012

Condors fly in the face of contemporary dance scene

The Japanese are often described as being inward-looking and stoic, with a sense of humor that often fails to connect with people from overseas. However, there are still rare birds among that bunch.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Stage

Dec 22, 2011

Japan's dramatists take on the 'nuclear village'

The place to start when reviewing this year's highlights in contemporary Japanese theater, has to be The Great East Japan Earthquake of March 11. That day led to a nation in mourning, an ongoing nuclear crisis and an awakening among dramatists, who saw the importance of their role to stimulate debate...

Japan Times

Events / Events Outside Tokyo

Dec 16, 2011

Cinderella tale gets K-popped

The curtain had hardly gone down at the world premiere of "Kun (Goong) — Love in a Palace" in Seoul in 2010 when the musical suddenly became the hottest ticket in South Korea's entertainment scene.

Events / Events Outside Tokyo

Dec 9, 2011

Chelfitsch's Okada returns to Japan with a special version of his hit play

Chelfitsch theater company founder Toshiki Okada is back with "Five Days in March," a play written in his hallmark style of youth slang.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Stage

Nov 24, 2011

Seigo Hatasawa is no ordinary school teacher

Japan's performing arts world is massively centered on Tokyo, yet one of its leading lights is based in Aomori City in the country's deeply unchic far north — and he's a school teacher.

Events / Events Outside Tokyo

Nov 11, 2011

Reworked play goes bilingual

Following critical acclaim for their first international collaboration program, "Wannabe," Tokyo's Kakikuukyaku Theater Company will present its second collaborative effort, "Kensatsukan ("The Government Inspector") at Komaba Agora Theater from this weekend.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Stage

Oct 6, 2011

Gamarjobat: Pantomime artists who have plenty to say

Tough-looking with their cockscomb mohawks — the red one topping Ketch!; the yellow one, HIRO-PON — the "silent-comedy" duo Gamarjobat ("Hello" in Georgian) are now well into a 31-stop tour that's filling theaters around the country with whoops and rollicking laughter — as well as their own "language"...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Stage

Sep 15, 2011

Francois Girard and a woman of many letters

"This wonderful project started when my friend, the Lebanese writer Wajdi Mouawad, gave me a book and said I should make a movie out it," Francois Girard explains. "But after I read it I got back to him and said, 'Sorry, I disagree with you. This is really not right for a movie — but it's perfect for...

You can often see generations of families enjoying performances together at Fuji Rock Festival.

Japan’s summer music festivals are feeling the heat in more ways than one

Akiko Trush says her experience with the neurological disorder dystonia left her feeling like she wanted to chop her own hand off.

The neurological disorder that 'kills culture'

By Tomoko Otake

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