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July 16, 2024
 

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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
Jun 12, 2008
The space to act out in Shizuoka
Shizuoka Performing Arts Center is Japan's first so-called European-style public theater. Founded by the Shizuoka prefectural government in 1997, it has its own company (also called SPAC) and an artistic director in residence when the norm is for public theater companies to share venues and for artistic...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
May 4, 2008
Hideki Noda: Acting with joy in his soul
Even in today's theater world in Japan, which tends to venerate age, at just 52 Hideki Noda is already a towering, legendary figure.
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
May 2, 2008
Blue Man Group wants you
It's been nearly five months since the blue-painted, robotic Blue Man Group first landed in Japan from planet America. During that two-month run, thousands of audience members experienced a close encounter of the cobalt kind.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Apr 10, 2008
A home in Tokyo
Brooklyn-born Robert Allan Ackerman first landed in Japan in 1990 to direct "Mystery of the Rose Bouquet" by Manuel Puig at the Benisan Pit in Tokyo. Several years later, the American became an associate director of Theater Project Tokyo (TPT), which was founded in 1993 by Hitoshi Kadoi and English director...
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Mar 28, 2008
Mayakovsky play sets future in our hands
The great Russian playwright and futurist poet Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893-1930) wrote the 60-role play "Mystery Bouffe" 90 years ago.
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Mar 21, 2008
Setagaya theater brings kyogen forward
Mansai Nomura is the leading star of kyogen (Japan's traditional comedy theater), but this 41-year-old who made his stage debut at age 3 has several other artistic faces, having acted in films, TV dramas and in contemporary theater dramas, too.
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Mar 21, 2008
New York Theater Workshop
Founded in 1979 in Manhattan's trendy East Village, the New York Theater Workshop (NYTW) is one of the most provocative and successful off-Broadway theaters in the United States. The megahit Broadway musical "RENT" by Jonathan Larson was born as a NYTW studio production in 1994 before it transferred...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Mar 6, 2008
Sulky modern youths return
"It was officially the runaway disaster of 2006. I was really glad that so many people didn't like it at all," laughs 34-year-old Toshiki Okada about his debut at the New National Theater, "Enjoy," which Japan's theater critics voted the year's worst play. The old guards' thumbs down was all the more...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Feb 21, 2008
A living play appears from the past
"I have absolutely no idea beforehand what exactly I am going to do. Everything comes together really at the last minute," says 50-year-old English dramatist Simon McBurney when asked how he's approaching his latest collaboration. Working with Japanese actors, McBurney is producing "Shunkin," a play...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jan 24, 2008
From ordinary to spectacular
Go Aoki is one of Japan's most in-demand playwrights and directors. The small venues where his Gring theater company typically stages his works attract drama-world insiders — as a result, besides taking Gring on the road in early 2008, Aoki has already been enlisted for three high-profile collaborations....
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Jan 11, 2008
Famed Japanese dancer branches into mime
In 1993, the legendary choreographer and radical ballet master Maurice Bejart created — especially for the Tokyo Ballet Company — a work based on the life of doomed author Yukio Mishima, called "M." For the main role of St. Sebastian, the late, great French artist who died last November...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Dec 27, 2007
The flash of the unflashy
Although much fanfare, excited TV coverage and celebrity casts accompanied the opening of new theatrical venues in Tokyo this year, such as Akasaka Red Theater, Theater Creation in Hibiya and Owl Spot in Ikebukuro, many would be hard pressed to truly wax lyrical about Japan's drama world over the last...
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Dec 21, 2007
The art of youth
An Aladdin's Cave of small, distinctive retail spaces, the Laforet building at a main crossroads in trendy Harajuku has been a shopping magnet for young people since it opened in 1978. This year, for instance, more than 3,000 lined up outside awaiting the start of its New Year sale. And whereas its Shibuya...
Japan Times
LIFE / WEEK 3
Dec 16, 2007
A drama of our own making
One recent sunny afternoon, I set off for a performance of "Tokyo/Olympic" by the city's Port B theater company.
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Dec 14, 2007
Two plays to cross the generations
Over the winter holiday entertainment season, two musical dramas stand out — one especially for children, the other for everyone, but both are tried-and-tested from previous premiere stagings.
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Dec 7, 2007
Absurdly serious play
...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Dec 6, 2007
"Kami no Benki/Kami no Koku"
Setagaya Public Theatre Dec. 13-16/Dec. 20-23
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Nov 29, 2007
Translator of the universal and the local
In his 1987 book "Ireland Kiko (Travels in Ireland)," the renowned historical novelist and essayist Ryotaro Shiba (1923-96) observed that "the typical Irish character could easily be dramatized," and that "Ireland is one of the richest countries for the literary arts, with people whose daily lives are...
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Nov 2, 2007
K-Ballet returns
News in early May this year that Tetsuya Kumakawa had sustained a serious injury on tour in Japan with his K-Ballet Company came as a terrible shock to his legions of fans.
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Oct 26, 2007
Israeli dance company finds friends in Saitama
With ever-more dance productions being staged at such mainstream Tokyo venues as Theater Cocoon in Shibuya, Setagaya Public Theater in Sangenjaya and even the New National Theater in Hatsudai, dance has clearly become an integral component of the performance-arts scene here.
Who needs AI when you have Hatsune Miku?
Over the first six months of 2024, a handful of songs using Vocaloid singer Hatsune Miku’s voice have enjoyed widespread attention, underlining a global interest in the character and the technology she represents.
Bloodied Trump survives assassination attempt at political rally
Former U.S. President Donald Trump is surrounded and evacuated by Secret Service agents at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday. Trump was rushed off stage at the rally after shots rang out.
Shooter came within inches of killing Trump, but left few clues as to why
An aerial view shows the stage where Republican presidential candidate and former U.S. President Donald Trump had been standing during an assassination attempt the day before, and the roof of a nearby building where a gunman was shot dead by law enforcement, in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Sunday.
Yen’s woes seem too big for even a BOJ hike this month to solve
The Bank of Japan headquarters in Tokyo
How to beat Japan’s summer heat in ways better for the planet
Tenugui towels hang up to dry at a dyeing company in Sakai, Osaka Prefecture, on May 8. The durable and versatile tenugui, which many people have in their homes, can be used in many ways to cool one’s body.
The neurological disorder that 'kills culture'
Akiko Trush says her experience with the neurological disorder dystonia left her feeling like she wanted to chop her own hand off.
How to beat Japan’s summer heat in ways better for the planet
Tenugui towels hang up to dry at a dyeing company in Sakai, Osaka Prefecture, on May 8. The durable and versatile tenugui, which many people have in their homes, can be used in many ways to cool one’s body.
After Trump shooting, U.S. presidential race might take a violent turn
United States Secret Service Counter Snipers stand guard on a rooftop during a campaign rally for U.S. President Donald Trump in Avoca, Pennsylvania, in 2020.
No AC this summer? No problem (for me).
Think air conditioning is a requirement for a Tokyo summer? Think again.
She’s paying ¥1 million to help behind the scenes at the Paris Olympics
Mai Tarumi, who previously volunteered at the postponed Tokyo Olympics in 2021, has a travel budget of ¥1 million for her trip to volunteer at the Paris Games.

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Longform

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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