ORIZA HIRATA’S SEINENDAN THEATER COMPANY
Image: Control Officers © Miura Urin
In lieu of the cancelled live performance of Seinendan Theater Company’s U.S. Tour, which would have brought Oriza Hirata’s troupe to Houston for performances of Control Officers + 100 Meters on May 14-15, 2020, the Japan-America Society of Houston, in collaboration with Japan Society New York (JSNY), is pleased to make available an additional showing from Seinendan Theater Company for your viewing pleasure.
The presentation of Control Officers is from a 2019 performance at the Komaba Agora Theater in Tokyo. English subtitles have been added to the archive video. Also included is a newly recorded Q&A session between JSNY Artistic Director Yoko Shioya and director Oriza Hirata. In the interview, Hirata speaks about the inspirations behind his plays and the future of the arts in the age of a pandemic.
Control Officers (Feb. 2019)
In this cynical yet humorous one-act comedy, Hirata looks at what is going on behind the scenes in the lead-up to the Summer Games in Tokyo, as the country’s top male swimmers undergo a routine doping test–and the doping control officers try to remain neutral while the interpersonal drama between the swimmers escalates around them. Hilarity ensues when the control officers try to remain neutral as the ongoing interpersonal drama between the swimmers unfolds before them.
English subtitles viewable by selecting closed captioning.
Previously we shared selections from the Japan Society New York archives.
According to the New York Times:
“we don’t see much contemporary Japanese theater in the United States – or much Japanese theater at all – so the...free streaming [of Oriza Hirata’s work] is a rare opportunity.”
Please note that Ronin Office Ladies and Robot Theater (Sayonara + I, Worker) may no longer be available to view online.
Ronin Office Ladies (Mar. 2006)
Ronin Office Ladies features a lunchroom filled with female office workers nonchalantly gossiping about serious topics like loyalty, revenge, rebellion, and suicide.
Robot Theater (Sayonara + I, Worker) (Feb. 2013)
Robot Theater, a double-bill of Sayonara and I, Worker, feature both human and android performers. In Sayonara, an android is brought to console a girl suffering from a fatal illness, but when its mechanics go awry, the meaning of life and death to humans and robots comes into question. In I, Worker, a husband's struggle to cope with the loss of his child is juxtaposed with the malaise of one of his robots, which has lost all motivation to work.
About Seinendan Theater Company
Seinendan Theater Company, founded in 1983 by psychologist-turned playwright and director Oriza Hirata is recognized as one of the most progressive and acclaimed theater companies in Japan. Hirata's "quiet theater" has received considerable attention and greatly influenced the Japanese theater scene since the 1990s. Seinendan's depiction of the quiet moments in daily life precipitated the quiet theater movement of post-bubble Japan. The theater of Seinendan has come to be known as distinctively Japanese in reflecting and distilling the rhythms, subtle tones and ironies of postmodern life in Japan today.
About Oriza Hirata
Oriza Hirata is a Japanese playwright, director, and academic. For the majority of his life, he has been best known for his work in theater and creating what he has coined, “contemporary colloquial theater,” or as theater critics call it, “quiet drama.”
The founder of Seinendan has earned great acclaim, especially in France where he has been invited for residencies to teach, direct and create new works, including those at Théâtre de la Ville, Théâtre de Gennevilliers, Centre Dramatique National de Besaçon, Théâtre National de Marseille, and Centre Dramatique de Thionville-Lorraine.
In 1995, Hirata won the 39th Kishida Kunio Drama Award with Tokyo Note (Tokyo Notes). In 1998, he received the 5th Yomiuri Theater Outstanding Director Award, for his production of Tsuki no Misaki (The Cape of the Moon), a play by Masataka Matsuda. In 2002, he won the AICT (Association Internationale des Critiques des Théâtre) Critique Award for his book Geijutsu Rikkokuron (Arts as the Basis of a Nation), published by Shueisha, and the following year, earned the Grand Prix of the 2nd Asahi Performing Arts Awards with Sono Kawa wo Koete, Gogatsu (Across the River in May). He is recognized for groundbreaking collaborations with artists in France, Korea, Australia, Ireland, Canada and the U.S., resulting in acclaimed productions of Wakare no Uta (Songs of Farewell), Kashuson (Lost Village), Mori no Oku (In the Heart of a Forest), Sunato Heitai (Sand and Soldiers), Par-dessus bord and Tori no tobu takasa (Overboard), among others.
At present, Hirata is research professor of the COI Research Promotion Office at the Tokyo University of the Arts, visiting professor of the Osaka University Center for the Study of Co* Design, visiting professor and special advisor to the president at Shikoku Gakuin University and Kyoto Bunkyo University, and general manager of the Fujimi Culture Hall KIRARI FUJIMI. He is also board member of the Japan Foundation for Regional Art-Activities and the Japanese Society for Theatre Research and advisor for cultural politics for Toyooka City.