Amid a boom in small theater groups in 1980s Tokyo, the Waseda University campus emerged as the epicenter for companies that would go on to become established in the theater scene. The Yamanote Jijosha company was also founded there in 1984 by Masahiro Yasuda, then student at Waseda, now a playwright, director and university lecturer.
Yasuda and his team have built an international reputation for Yamanote Jijosha’s collaborative philosophy of theater, its Yamanote Method for actor training and its yojōhan nonrealism acting style. In 2013, Yasuda’s work with his company earned him the Special Achievement Award at the influential Sibiu International Theater Festival in Romania, the third-largest of its kind in the world.
Yamanote Jijosha has toured Europe with Shakespeare productions such as “Titus Andronicus” and “The Tempest,” and staged other classics by the Bard such as “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” as well as Chekhov’s “The Seagull” and a dramatized version of influential 14th-century Italian story collection “The Decameron.”
With your current subscription plan you can comment on stories. However, before writing your first comment, please create a display name in the Profile section of your subscriber account page.