With guest productions from as far afield as Kuwait, Israel, Germany and the United States, this year's 12th annual Tokyo International Arts Festival (TIF) is delivering a challenging program of theater and dance from some of the world's leading dramatists. In doing so, TIF -- held for the first time at the Nishi-Sugamo Arts Factory, a disused junior high school in Toshima Ward -- is living up to the high standards the nonprofit group's selection committee has previously set itself.

In 1999, the festival's bill brought together "The Man Who" from Briton Peter Brook -- one of the world's most important contemporary directors -- and "Dancing at Lughnasa" by his daughter, Irina. In 2002, TIF hosted the Japanese debut of the Berliner Ensemble in a violent, avant-garde version of Shakespeare's "Richard II" by director Claus Peymann. In 2004, the festival broadened its horizon with a "Program from the Middle East and Eastern Europe," that included productions from Kuwaiti, Lebanese and Palestinian dramatists whose work has rarely been seen in Japan.

After last year's provocative and cynical revision of Tennessee Williams' "A Streetcar Named Desire" by avant-garde German dramatist Frank Castorf of the Volksbuhne theater company, TIF looks again at original material from the United States in 2006. Explaining the return to the source of many foreign productions in Japan, TIF Director Sachio Ichimura says in the program "The United States is isolated in the art community today. From 9/11 to the war in Iraq, the U.S. government has pursued its hard line despite the will of many American artists, leading the artists to further isolation. But even if Bush's government is disliked by the rest of the world, American artists should not be considered likewise."