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    AKEMI HORIE

    theatre/opera director, film maker

 

Musician, choreographer and academic.

Studied with Jan Kott, whose radical approach to the theatre has been influential.       

Research fields: Sophocles, Noh and Samuel Beckett.   

Expert on Kabuki and Noh theatres.  Pioneered experimental work interpreting

the Noh aesthetics and dramaturgy in modern theatrical terms.         

Japanese citizen; UK resident.   Brief Biography   Contact

 

      BA: Humanities, International Christian University, Tokyo

MFA: Theatre Arts, School of Fine and Applied Arts, Boston University.

PhD: Dramatic Art, University of California, Berkeley

Film making: New York Film Academy

 

As a theatre director my work is distinctly minimalist achieving powerful strikingly visual theatricality with the sparest of means. "Compelling", "restrained but eloquent", "utterly clear and focused", "incredibly pure", "incredibly strong" are some of the comments by reviewers on my recent productions. I thrive on the spatial constraints of theatre, which compel inventiveness; equally I relish the visual and temporal freedom in film storytelling.

 

AMONG PLAYS DIRECTED: The Cyclops (Euripides); Blood Wedding (Lorca); The Choephori (Aeschylus); The Well-Stone (Zeami); Sotoba Komachi (Kan'ami); The Wild Duck (Ibsen); Three Sisters (Chekhov); Friends (Abe); The Dreaming of the Bones (Yeats); Endgame, Come and Go, Krapps Last Tape (Beckett); The Cliff of Time (Abe); Vatzlav (Mrozek); Kesho (Inoue).  World premieres of Paul Barker's operas The Pillow Song and Malinche for the London International Opera Festival. One Night or Day, a short film based on Samuel Beckett's Stirrings Still, One Evening & Krapp's Last Tape.

 

 

WORK IN PROGRESS

 

Yabu no Naka (In the Grove)  A Cubist vision of a whodunnit, a stage adaptation of the short story by Ryunosuke Akutagawa (1892-1927). The tale famously inspired Kurosawa's film classic Rashomon. A body is found in the grove: the drama unfolds in a manner reminiscent of Brecht's The Measures Taken. The witnesses' conflicting accounts of the crime, a rape and murder, illuminate the elusive nature of truth. At the centre is a young woman, the enigma who provokes, propels, and finally veils the action/truth. An experimental piece involving recitative, mime, sound (percussion & flute) and projected moving images. The stage is almost bare, defined only by several bamboo trees shooting out from the centre in all directions.  

 

Five Easy Pieces  'Journeying' is an eternal metaphor for life, and writers have addressed this theme since time immemorial. A collection of five short scenes constructed respectively from tales of ancient Greece, medieval Japan, the Middle East, modern and post-modern Europe will explore the subject. Each man, or woman, has a story to tell and a journey to take, ultimately expressing their common humanity. A spare, minimalist production.

 

King Lear  A stripped-down essential Shakespeare.  Lear's story is well known. Can his tragedy be presented with a minimum of narrative and decor, and be all the more powerful for it?

 

The Persians  Aeschylus recounts the catastrophic defeat of the Persians in the Battle of Salamis (480BC), in which he himself took part. With its strong anti-war message and a substantial Chorus part, the world's oldest extant play (472BC) provides the basis for a powerful operatic production. Suspended after several years of preparatory work due to lack of the substantial funding required.

 

 

SELECTED WORKS

 

 

Ludus Danielis  A rarely staged 13th century music drama based on the biblical tales of the exiled prophet Daniel. First performed by the young clerics of Beauvais Cathedral, Northern France, this medieval masterpiece combining music, poetry and visual spectacle formed part of the post-Christmas celebrations. Produced in collaboration with The Harp Consort, the premire performances took place in January 2007 at Southwark Cathedral, London, and Kings College Chapel, Cambridge. Despite its Latin text, Ludus Danielis received enthusiastic responses from the audience and the press. More on Daniel   Video Clips   More Pics  Flyer front & back

 

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Review

 

 Southwark Cathedral forms a stage-set beyond compare, while on a dais in the middle of the chancel stands an elongated red-lacquer chair, like a ladder to heaven: the sole prop that the director Akemi Horie has permitted herself. . .

 

As a musical event, this would charm the birds off the trees. The timbre of the male singers - led by the baritone Peter Harvey and tenor Julian Podger - reflects classical polish, while the female singers, though pure-toned, favour a folky kind of belt.

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What unites them, however, is a beguiling blend of conviction and joie de vivre, plus a uniquely deft mix of medieval musical sounds. Having taken the surviving manuscript's minimalism as their cue for harmonic inventions, the modal music that results creates a wonderfully dreamy ambiance.  Michael Church, opera critic of The Independent, giving 5 stars.  Daniel Review in full   

 

 

 

Contemporary Noh A trilogy comprising the 14 century Noh play Sotoba Komachi, the kyogen The Melon Thief  and Journey, a collage based on three works of Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot, Endgame and Worstward Ho.

 

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On the Noh stage, time takes on non-monotonic references, the past is in the present and the phenomenal world merges into the worlds beyond.

 

Sotoba Komachi recounts the tale of a 9th century historical figure, once a legendary beauty, now cursed to live on in decreptitude possessed by the vengeful spirit of a taunted suitor. An encounter between two pilgrim monks and a mysterious old woman unfolds the drama. The Noh classic by Kan'ami (1336-1383) is performed with new music and choreography, initiating an aesthetic and thematic journey into the post-modern world of Samuel Beckett.

 

Journey, echoing the Noh dramaturgy, portrays a chance encounter between Clov of Endgame, on his perpetual journey in limbo since leaving Hamm, and the two men on a country road still waiting for Godot. What message would Clov impart to the two waiting men? A single soprano voice as the Chorus sings unaccompanied passages from Worstward Ho. Clov is also heard muttering words from it as he journeys on.

 

The Melon Thief, an anonymous medieval comic interlude (kyogen) performed here in a timeless universal context, bridging the two distinct worlds of Kan'ami and Beckett.

 

The project interprets the medieval Japanese Noh in a modern theatrical context and illuminates a certain affinity between the world visions of Noh and Samuel Beckett.

           

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In summer 1989 I wrote to Beckett explaining the project and how I would combine his three works in a collage in Noh form.  A copy of Sotoba Komachi was also sent.  I was taking great liberties with his works by assuming that Clov indeed left Hamm at the end of Endgame and by postulating a chance encounter between Clov and the two waiting men.  I mentioned also that the three characters would speak selected lines from his plays in the collage, and that the Chorus would sing, and Clov would speak, passages from Worstward Ho.  Beckett gave me permission to proceed, with brief but kind words of encouragement.

 

Noh Dramaturgy 

Journey: A Variation on Beckett

Journey Score    Komachi Score with Text                              

             

 

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Reviews

 

 "Deliberately understated work of this kind, with a few props and costumes, needs to invest much emotion in the spare and significant  Director Akemi Horie and Simon O'Corra with set and lighting succeed in bringing out the poetry of these immediately appealing pieces charged with a tension and resonance belying their apparent simplicity"            Gerard van Werson, The Stage  Werson in full      

 

"These three plays endeavour to make 14th century Noh theatre modern and universal: there are no masks and two are performed in modern dress The third piece Journey is an amalgam of three Beckett plays, which is incredibly strong although quite hard to discern the Noh input. Fine performances, and worth seeing."     Nina-Anne Kaye, City Limits   Kaye

 

"This profound piece is striking for its sombre philosophy and vibrant poetry, both expressed with quiet strength and atmospheric elegance"   Brian G Cooper, The Stage Cooper

 

Performers: Ruth Posner (Komachi), Martin Lawton (Chorus, Didi), Richard Tyrrell (Priest, Clov), Stephen Webber (Priest, Gogo). Musicians: Amanda Broome (soprano); Rowland Sutherland (wind instruments & drums).  Direction & choreography: Akemi Horie.  Music: Ho Wai-On.  Lighting & set: Simon O'Corra.  Costumes: Dawn Allsopp.  Translation of Komachi text: Arthur Waley.

Performed at Theatre Musium, London, WC2; Komachi  also at ICA, London SW1; Lilian Baylis Theatre, Sadlers Wells, London EC1

 

 

Vatzlav A satirical farce by the Polish playwright Slamomir Mrozek, riotously performed at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Vatzlav, a shipwrecked runaway slave, is washed up on the shore of a capitalist colony, ruled by the raspberry-sucking Mr Bat and his dysfunctional family. Forced to impersonate a bear, he fights off each peril with streetwise ingenuity, turning young Justine/Justice into a striptease performer and himself into a capitalist entrepreneur along the way. Then comes the revolution -  

 

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77 short scenes were performed at a rapid tempo, like a comic strip, with the actors moving portable scenery, cardboard trees, stools etc., setting their own scenes. Vatzlav Stills

 

Reviews                            

 

"A rich experience, a web of spreading images  The small cast of Cambridge Actors Workshop conjures up a remarkably complete caricature of society. The piece is loud and colourful and has an engaging tendency to shoot off in all directions while retaining a sort of loony unity. Zany"   Colin Currie, The Scotsman

 

"The Actors Workshop in Cambridge staged Waclaw (Vatslav) at this year's Edinburgh Festival Fringe.  I wish to emphasize the full success achieved by this ambitious and talented young group of actors. In large measure this is due to the work of the director, Akemi Horie, a Japanese lady, who with unusual sensitivity managed to penetrate the strange atmosphere intended and created by the author the result of which has been not so much a philosophical play but a clever sharp political satire."   Tadeurz Ziarvki, The Polish Daily (Translated from Polish).

 

 

Performers: Bruce Addison (Vatzlav), Beatrice Braude (Lackey), Nicholas Frankau (Sassafras), Robin Frost (Quail,  Genius), Eithne Hannigan (Justine), Craig McConnell (General Barbaro), Mavis Mitchell (Mrs.Bat), Stephen Reed (Mr.Bat, Oedipus, Executioner), Richard Sisson (Bobbie).  Direction: Akemi Horie. Designs: Sarah Percy-Lancaster.  Lighting: Ian Larkin. Sound: Nick Brown.  Performed at Corn Exchange, Cambridge; Walpole Hall, Edinburgh.

 

 

Three Sisters  The late Chekhovian plays, though rooted in the Naturalistic convention, contain the seeds of the modern Absurdist vision, culminating in the works of writers such as Samuel Beckett. Indeed the thematic parallels between Three Sisters and Waiting for Godot, and The Cherry Orchard and Endgame, are remarkable.

 

In Three Sisters in particular, the Naturalistic form often seems to be disrupted by Chekhov's apparent impulse to create a concrete Absurdist vision on stage. Observe the loose episodic structure of the play; the metaphors, flowers, wintry wind, fire, dead trees defining each act; the heightened, almost grotesque characterization of Andrey, Natasha, Soliony and Koolyghin; the seemingly unrelated dialogues, asides and bursts of laughter in the background commenting on the main action on stage, like a Chorus. And mythical 'Moscow', like Godot, hangs over the entire play.

 

In this production the sunny flower-filled opening scene is progressively stripped bare as the play moves towards a bleak landscape of fading hopes. Performed with the minimum dcor, without four walls, without intermission, to bring out the essentials of the play. 

 

Review:

 

 "I loved it - it was so well-laid out before me; I felt there was so much going on. Your production has converted me to this play, for the first time, even though I had already seen several productions"  Letter  from Paul Chand, critic and friend. 

 

SLIDE SEQUENCES ACT1 - IV  Sisters Slides Show

 

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VIDEO CLIP: Irena Crisis Act lll   QuickTime streaming. Recorded at Lilian Baylis Theatre, Sadler's Wells, London EC1 

 

Performers: Silas Hawkins (Andrey),  Ruth Bennett (Natasha),  Michaela Burgess (Olga),  Sarah Montague (Masha),  Josephine Peer (Irena),  Garry Scanlan (Koolyghin),  Leslie Aston (Vershinin),  Tim Mitchell (Toozenbach),  Andy Blacksmith (Soliony),  Richard Gofton (Chebutykin),  David Hallen (Fedotik, Rode),  Stephen Bateman (Ferapont),  Ruth Posner (Anfisa).  Translation by Elisaveta Fen.  Direction: Akemi Horie.  Designs: Anabel Temple.  Lighting: Ian Watts. 

                              

Olga Knipper (the author's wife and the first Masha) recalls in her memoir that when Chekhov gave the first reading of the play at the Moscow Arts Theatre in October 1900, the dismayed actors reacted that the play was only a "sketch" or "outline" with "no fully developed characters."  Chekhov, smiling in embarrassment and coughing intensely, responded that he had only written "a light-hearted comedy."  Stanislavsky (the first Vershinin) also recalls that Chekhov was convinced that the play was incomprehensible and destined to fail.  Three Sisters premiered on 31 January 1901 at the Moscow Arts Theatre. The initial press response was mixed: "a major event", "too pessimistic and hopeless", "puzzling indistinctness of plot and character motivation" - somewhat reminiscent of the press reception that was to greet the premire of Waiting for Godot half a century later.

 

 

Resonances of Passion  A programme of two Noh plays, pairing the medieval classic Izutsu by Zeami (1362-1443) with a modern western counterpart, The Dreaming of the Bones by W.B. Yeats.

 

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Izutsu (The Well-Stone) tells the story of a woman whose spirit has remained attached to the locus of her passion for centuries after her death. The encounter between a pilgrim monk and a young woman at an old abandoned temple unfolds the drama.

 

The heroine, Ki no Aritsune's daughter, was a 9th century historical figure. Her lover, Ariwara no Narihira (825-880), was a poetic genius, renowned also for his handsome and amorous persona. His poems, and several of hers, appear in the anthology Kokinshu compiled in 905. Several of love poems they exchanged are woven into the play. As Zeami tells it, the old well in these abandoned temple grounds, where she appears, was where the two once played as children.

 

In The Dreaming of the Bones (1919) Yeats applies the Noh formula to a political subject - the historical roots and aftermath of the 1916 Easter Rising. A young Nationalist fugitive meets a mysterious couple when lost in the mountains. He has fought in Dublin and will be shot if he is caught. The couple offer to guide him to safety, but they want something in return - something he cannot or will not give. 

 

The mysterious pair are revealed to be Diarmuid MacMurrough (1100-71), King of Leinster, and his lover Devorgilla, wife of the Lord of Breifne. As the legend has it, their fatal passion led to MacMurroughs banishment. He then fled to England and, licensed by Hentry II, enlisted volunteers and invaded his own country, capturing Dublin in 1170. The Anglo-Norman occupation of Ireland remained until well into the 20th century.

 

Yeats was greatly inspired by the Noh theatre via his young friend Ezra Pound.  Here the urgent political theme is given a poetic aspect with its mythical dimension drawing on old Celtic beliefs.  The play was not performed until 1931 because of its political content, which Yeats himself feared might be "too powerful".

 

Performed with the minimum of dcor, six actors and two musicians (wind instruments and percussion). The Irish composer Paddy Cunneen created the music for both plays through exploratory workshops.

 

Programme notes on plays, authors & history

Izutsu Script

 

Reviews

 

"On the floor of the deep, wide stage, ropes outline a square, and inside this a small block decorated with grasses represents a grave, and a larger, white block the well-head - and in the Yeats play the summit of a mountain in County Clare.  The restraint of the settings may sound austere but their precision gives all we need to know. On one side of the square sit the musicians   The unshowy grace of Justin Allder's Diarmuid and his queen (Amanda Rachael Lee) as they sedately dance, arms almost touching but separated by grief, gives this production its sorrowful grandeur I have never before experienced so convincing an expression of the tensions and beauty of this exotic genre."

Jeremy Kingston, The Times     Kingston in full

 

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"Yeats, himself aiming at a meeting of East and West, was remarkably well served.   Poetry flared briefly in our imaginations, and in its reflected glow theatre came gloriously alive."     Nicholas Dromgoole, The Sunday Telegraph

 

"The staging is simple and incredibly pure, the performers creating just exactly the right degree of stylization for their performance, able to make the poetic text both believable and appropriately symbolic  Paddy Cunneen (composer) has really crafted a Britten-like opera The sound hovered creatively between Japanese and Western styles (with fantastic playing of Japanese instruments) creating a multi-cultural, kaleidoscopic experience.  The direction stands out as peculiarly restrained yet eloquent - simple images and extraordinarily slow pacing made the experience almost like a meditation, possibly a little austere, but utterly clear and focused "    Arts Council 

 

 

 

VIDEO CLIPS  QuickTime streaming. Edited in part.  Recorded at The Place Theatre, London WC1

 

Izutsu 1 Opening                                                                         Yeats 1 Opening

Izutsu 2 Entrance                                                                       Yeats 2 Encounter 

Izutsu 3 Story                                                                             Yeats 4 Near Summit 

Izutsu 4 Childhood                                                                      Yeats 5 Dance & Last Chorus Song 

Izutsu 5 Comic Interlude (silent, double speed)

Izutsu 6 Dawn Rite

 

Performers: Amanda Rachael Lee (Young Woman), Justin Allder (Villager, Stranger), Reg Eppey (Chorus/Baritone), Richard Gofton (Monk, Chorus/Tenor), Walter Van Dyk (Narihira, Chorus/Tenor), Andy Wisher (Young Man, Chorus/Bass).  Musicians: Clive Bell (wind instruments & electric harp), Malcolm Ball (percussion).  Direction, design, choreography: Akemi Horie.  Music: Paddy Cunneen.  Lighting: Simon Bennison, Neil Fraser.  Costume, props: Jess Curtis.  New translation of Izutsu by Richard Gofton with Akemi Horie

 

 

File written by Adobe Photoshop 4.0The Choephori  An exploration of the second play of Aeschylus' trilogy The Oresteia. In his version of the myth, Orestes and Electra are impressionable youths, uncertain and fearful of their god-ordained task of revenge. They must rely on the guidance of the Chorus, who are themselves enslaved Trojan women and can only give voice to the forces of Nemesis.

 

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In this production the Chorus, voicing the law of vengeance, speak in the original Greek, a language that the young heroes do not comprehend at first, indeed the sound of it frightens them. But inevitably they will begin to copy the alien phrases, word by word. By the time they carry out the matricide, they have come to speak the language of Nemesis fluently.

 

Reviews

 

"Akemi Horie's production makes explicit this metaphor of enmeshment. Various contrasting nets envelop the stage and are used to good effect Quite a lot of the original Greek is retained, combined with the fluent Chicago translation. It is most impressive when being intoned by the chorus of bitter slave women, especially where they urge on Electra and her brother to revenge. The harshness and foreboding of the intonation is matched by the almost aggressive asymmetry of the positioning of actors on stage (How refreshing not to see a static chorus) and the atonality of the accompanying Tibetan music (which is reminiscent of the African music in Pasolini's Oedipus Rex)."    Cambridge University Broadsheet

 

"The chilling intensity of the drama with the remorseless chanting of the Greek chorus and the stark imagery of the huge net of death is both compelling and engrossing"   Brian Cooper, The Stage  Cooper in full

 

Choephori Stills  Cambridge & London productions, with a different cast.

 

Performers for the London production at ICA & Lillian Baylis: Laurissa Kalinowsky (Electra), Peter Kenny (Orestes), Julia Righton (Clytemnestra), Christopher Brown (Aegisthus), Martin Lawton (Agamemnon), Joolia Cappleman, Liz Dickinson, Philippa Luce, Ruth Posner, Deborah Shipley, Joyce Springer (Trojan Women).  Direction, design & choreography: Akemi Horie.  Lighting: Ian Watts.  Costume: Jacqueline Fitt.

 

  

Kesho & Toki no Gake  Two contemporary Japanese plays representing the two main streams of modern Japanese Theatre. 

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In Kesho (Make-up), Hisashi Inoue (1934-2010), writing in the wholely home-grown literary tradition, weaves an ingenious mono-dialogue probing the mind of actress-manager Satsuki of a strolling kabuki troupe - a dying tradition in contemporary Japan.

In her dressing room, she is making up as the young outlaw hero she is about to play. She is alone on stage, though talking to her actors apparently off stage. As she begins to rehearse her lines, moving in and out of the play within a play, the story of the young outlaw, searching for his birth mother, and her own story of a long lost son, begin to intersect, with the borderline between what is real and fictional becoming increasingly blurred. The invisible characters Satsuki led us to believe in now appear only figments of her imagination. As the raucous cries of demolition men off-stage intrude on her make-believe, the evening seems no longer a routine: all along, it seems, she was play-acting all alone in an old deserted theatre about to be bulldozed - her time is up.   Kesho Stills 

 

In Toki no Gake (The Cliff of Time), Kobo Abe (1924-1993), representing the post-modern vision, spins out the fragments of thoughts that pass through the mind of a young boxer as he fights in the ring. His mind's monologue floats over the noise and commotion of the fight, interrupted now and then by his trainer's urging voice, which momentarily jolts him back to the bout at hand. The boxer fights on the cliff of time up to the fourth round, then it seems he is finished. The acclaimed author of Woman in the Dunse (film version Cannes Palme d'Or), Abe wrote this short piece for his trilogy Bo ni Natta Otoko (The Man Who Turned into a Stick). His writing is often compaired to the works of Kafka, Arrabal and Ionesco.

 

Reviews

 

Kesho  "The lights go up on a dressing room and the recumbent form on the floor of Yoko Satsuki, the actress-manager of a band of strolling players who keep alive the faded tradition of popular kabuki style period melodrama. With a scratch of her bottom, she awakes to prepare for her role as Isaburo, a young outlaw hero   The dividing-line between the play and the play within the play is so skilfully blurred that the two lives frequently meld into one."           John Coldstream, The Daily Telegraph

 

Toki no Gake  "On a darkened stage the only objects visible are a red punch-bag, a line of vertical ladders and the spot-lit head and shoulders of Richard Tyrrell playing a young boxer steeling himself for the fight he must win or forfeit his vital ranking.  The thoughts he speaks alternate between foolish hope and panic, unconsciously humorous (a balance neatly achieved in Donald Keene's translation) and dreamily poetic.  The shadows of his boxing fists flicker at the periphery of the spot-lit area but the gathering drama is measured in the subtle changes in Tyrrell's face (imagine Kafka with a grin) and his feverish nerviness of voice."   Jeremy Kingston, The Times

 

"A brilliantly clear, economical style"    Paul Chand, The Stage  

 

Performers: Jackie Skarvellis (Yoko Satsuki), Richard Tyrrell (Boxer), James Ramsey (Voice)

Direction: Akemi Horie.  Designs: Jan Blake. Lighting: Tina MacHugh.

Translations: Toki no Gake by Donald Keene;  Kesho by Akemi  Horie, published with Notes on the Background of Kesho in Encounter No.5, 1989.

Performed at Bloomsbury Theatre, London WC1

 

 

File written by Adobe Photoshop 4.0One Night or Day  A short film inspired by an evocative passage in Krapp's Last Tape recalling the end of his love affair on a sunny lake distant years ago. Krapp's apparent attachment to this segment of his tape/life, to which he returns to listen again at the ending, is ironic and deeply moving. Elements from Beckett's File written by Adobe Photoshop 4.0short stories Stirrings Still and One Evening are also incorporated in the narraive.

 

Here, Krapp has kept a record of his life's events on 16mm film. In his dotage he lives alone surrounded by loose filmstrips - fragments of his life - and spends his days labouriously rewinding them back onto their reels. On this particular night or day, he comes across the alluring image of a young woman in a boat. Memories flood back, and her enigmatic smile lures him out to the street and to the upper lake, apparently the locus of their last rendezvous.

 

The camera follows the old man's real or imagined journey to the lake. Shot in black and white with an Arriflex 16mm camera.

 

Key Passages from Krapp's Last Tape, Stirrings still, One Evening

Script One Night or Day

One Night or Day digitally edited abridged version, single sound track.

 

Performers: Phyllida Bannister (Young Woman), Richard Gofton (Old Man), Ruth Posner (Old Woman).

Writer/Director/Editor: Akemi Horie.  Director of Photography: Deena Lombardi.  Assistant Camera: Zac De Santiago.

 

 

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miscellaneous

 

Friends A whimsical black comedy by Kobo Abe (see Toki no Gake above). A family of eight is on a mission to search out a lonely soul upon whom to bestow their love and friendship. Inviting themselves into a young man's flat, they take over his household, and his fiance, devouring him with their love and attention in the end. Even the police, called in to investigate their forced entry, cannot detect anything sinister in the smiling faces of the friendly family. Performed in the round in Donald Keenes translation at the Questors Theatre, London W5.  Friends Stills

 

Japanese Theatre and the West  An International Theatre Symposium, aiming to promote creative interactions between the Japanese and Western theatres. Organized for the Japan Festival 91 in association with the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, and the Japan Research Centre, SOAS, University of London. The meeting assembled leading scholars and artists in the field from sixteen nations, with Jan Kott (Poland), Georges Banu (France), Leonard Pronko (USA), Nicola Savarese (Italy), Zvika Seper (Israel) and Yasunari Takahashi (Japan) among the contributors. Also participating were three performing companies, Pohlyboveho Divadla (Czech Republic), Umewaka Noh Troup (Japan) and Workshop 5 (UK). The four-day event held at the ICA comprised a programme of lectures, demonstrations, workshops and performances. The proceedings were published by Harwood Academic Publishers in 1994, as a special edition of Contemporary Theatre Review, Japanese Theatre and the West, edited by Akemi Horie-Webber

 

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