Contemporary theater in Japan existed as something akin to an underground cult in the 1960s and '70s. In the '80s, with bubble money swilling around everywhere, many of these youthful, looselyknit groups came in from the cultural margins and formed theater companies. Led by experimental directors such as Hideki Noda (of company Yumeno Yuminsha) and Shoji Kokami (The Third Stage), this shift blossomed into the vibrant shogekijo (small-scale theater) movement in which many new talents flourished. Slowly but surely, contemporary theater took its place in Japan's general artistic culture.

Then, in the 1990s, this movement took a skeptical, socio-realist turn, creating a new style of drama as the bubble burst and prior assumptions -- about society, about Japan itself -- began to crumble in the gathering gloom of recession, unemployment and bankruptcies. In place of the life-loving catharsis that characterized shogekijo theater, and made audiences feel as if they'd experienced a part of that era's upbeat atmosphere, the dramas of the '90s were more somber and pessimistic. Small theater companies tried to grapple with a shockingly unpredictable future.

Still grappling is Suzuki Matsuo, one of the representative dramatists of the '90s, whose newly written "Go On" is playing at the Sogetsu Hall in Tokyo until Oct. 26.