Support for Collaborative Creations between Japanese and International Artists
International Creations in Performing Arts 2024

About International Creations in Performing Arts

For 2024, the projects below were selected under competitive bidding.

Arche LLC
TANINO Kuro & T2G Théâtre de Gennevilliers, Centre Dramatique National (France)

Project Title: “Maître Obscur”

photo of
TANINO Kuro
(c) T2G Théâtre de Gennevilliers
photo of
Daniel JEANNETEAU
(c) Olivier_Roller

Maître Obscur is a coproduction by Arche LLC and the Théâtre de Gennevilliers, Centre Dramatique National. Since Daniel JEANNETEAU took over as director of the Théâtre de Gennevilliers, the theater has devoted particular attention to Japan, and TANINO Kuro (leader of the theater company Niwa Gekidan Penino) was invited by Jeanneteau to become its associate artist. Tanino will reinvent his own play The Dark Master, which has been restaged several times with alterations since 2004 and was performed at the Théâtre de Gennevilliers in 2018, as Maître Obscur, a brand-new play exploring issues of the manipulation and control of the mind. Following two years of intensive collaboration, Maître Obscur will be presented at the Théâtre de Gennevilliers in September 2024 as an entry in the Festival d’Automne à Paris.

Performances: September 19 to October 7, 2024 (Venue: T2G Théâtre de Gennevilliers, Centre Dramatique National)
*For more details, please refer to the websites of Théâtre de Gennevilliers (French only) and Niwa Gekidan Penino.

KYOTO EXPERIMENT
MATSUMOTO Nanako & Anchi LIN / Ciwas TAHOS (Taiwan)

Project Title: Kyoto Experiment 2024 “Sticky Hands, Stitched Mountains”

photo of
MATSUMOTO Nanako
(c) Shingo Kanagawa
photo of
Anchi LIN (Ciwas TAHOS)
(c) Julia Lin Kingham

This performance project is a coproduction by MATSUMOTO Nanako from the performance unit team chiipro and Anchi LIN (Ciwas TAHOS), a new media and performance artist descended from the indigenous Atayal (Itaṟal) people of Taiwan and based in Taipei and Naarm/Melbourne.
In recent years, Matsumoto has begun calling the multilayered embodiment and transformation of various historical and cultural representations within her creative process a “yokai body,” referring to supernatural monsters in Japanese folklore. This “yokai body” is the springboard from which Matsumoto and Lin (Tahos) will create a work based on joint research into legends about yokai and their equivalents in Japan and Taiwan. The collaboration with Lin (Tahos), who creates works based on the unique spirituality of the Atayal people, is aimed at realizing a creative process and performances that approach both the endemism and transversality of culture in Asia.
Focusing on the collection of Japanese and Taiwanese oral traditions by Japanese cultural anthropologists during the Meiji era (1868–1912), Matsumoto and Lin (Tahos) will produce a work that reflects the political history of East Asia while also referencing topics such as yokai as narratives of taboos (and their social contexts), yokai from female and queer perspectives, relationships with land based on the worldview passed down by the Atayal people, and modernization and the disappearance of oral traditions.

Performances: October 12-14, 2024 (Venue: THEATRE E9 KYOTO)
*For more details, please refer to the website of Kyoto Experiment.

KAAT Kanagawa Arts Theatre
KAAT & Vanishing Point (UK)

Project Title: “Confessions of a Shinagawa Monkey”

photo of
KAAT
photo of
Vanishing Point
(c) Mihaela Bodlovic

KAAT Kanagawa Arts Theatre and Vanishing Point, a world-renowned artist-led theatre company based in Scotland, are working together on international collaboration to create a new production. Since 2022, after several domestic and international workshops and discussions, Japanese and British actors and creative staff have teamed up to create this performance.
The theatrical work they will be working on this time is a fantastical comic mystery based on the short stories "Shinagawa Monkey" and "Confessions of a Shinagawa Monkey" by MURAKAMI Haruki, one of the world-renowned Japanese authors. It is a story about a monkey raised to speak human language and understand human culture. This production, which deals with multi-layered themes such as coercion on others, sin and salvation, memory and identity, is depicted using bilingual dialogue in Japanese and English and unique visual language to create an unparalleled dreamlike world. After premiering at KAAT Kanagawa Arts Theatre on 29th November 2024 (Preview on 28th November), it will perform in Glasgow, the theatre company's home base, in late February 2025.

Performances: November 28 to December 8, 2024 (Venue: KAAT Kanagawa Arts Theatre)
*For more details, please refer to the websites of KAAT Kanagawa Arts Theatre.

P
KANAYAMA Sugatsu & S.LEE (US)

Project Title: Work-In-Progress Performance "K-TTR"

photo of
KANAYAMA Sugatsu
(c) TANAKA Daisuke
photo of
S.LEE
(c) Carlos Montano

KANAYAMA Sugatsu (Tokatsu Sports) brings fresh perspectives to the contemporary theatrical world with his style bridging reality and fiction and weaving in social satire while introducing a hip-hop approach to theater. S.LEE is a next-generation artist who continues to take on unique projects, such as the fusion of theater and mental health, as an actor and playwright in New York’s off-Broadway theater.
Kanayama, a third-generation Korean immigrant living in Tokyo, Japan, and Lee, a second-generation Korean immigrant living in New York, USA, were born and raised in different societies and yet share the same heritage and live in the same era. Their meeting will serve as an opportunity for them to closely examine their identities as well as the social conditions beyond those identities and the present state of multicultural society through each other’s deeply personal life stories, which will then be presented as a theatrical production. The work-in-progress performance to be held in 2024 will be in anticipation of the full-scale creative process and performances in 2025.

Performance:
December 10-11, 2024（Venue : PLAT SHIBUYA）
For more details, please refer to the website of precog .

Jun Kawasaki, Music and Poetic Drama Laboratory
KAWASAKI Jun & JEONG Wonki (Korea)

Project Title: “Kuroshio Current Project Taiwan-Yonaguni-Jeju 'Then Dance with Souls' 'Eurasian Opera Op.4 SHIO - Song of diaspora”

photo of
Music and Poetic Drama Laboratory (KAWASAKI Jun）
photo of
JEONG Wonki

"Eurasian Opera" is a genre in music theater that incorporates folklore, music, and language cultures of various regions of Asia and Europe. The new work focusing on the present state of the cultures of Jeju Island in Korea, the indigenous peoples of Taiwan, and the Ryukyu Islands (especially Yonaguni Island) will be staged in Okinawa and Tokyo in December 2024. Led by Japanese and Korean composers KAWASAKI Jun and JEONG Wonki, Korean and Taiwanese performers of traditional music, dancers, filmmakers, and artists will come together to create a collaborative work based on dialogues among artists with roots on each of the respective islands who confront their native culture. Relating border crossers moving from island to island by boat to modern diaspora members who remain in ongoing dialogue with their native lands, the production will examine the true nature of “homeland” and explore the shape of future multicultural symbiosis. The main performer will be HIGASHIMORI Aika, a young film director and actor from Yonaguni Island. The vocal soloists will be Eri LIAO, who is descended from the indigenous Atayal (Itaṟal) people of Taiwan, and MOON Seokbeom, a singer and actor from Jeju Island. A chamber music ensemble organized in Japan will be joined by players of the gayageum (twelve-stringed zither) and traditional percussionists from Korea, as well as players of the sheng (a Chinese free-reed wind instrument) from Taiwan.

Okinawa Performances: December 7–8, 2024 (Venue: Tenbusu Naha)
Tokyo Performances: December 10–11, 2024 (Venue: Nippori Sunny Hall)
*For more details, please refer to the website of Music and Poetic Drama Laboratory.

Modern Puppet Center
SHIRAGA Momoko & Lattanakone INSISIENGMAY (Laos)

“Asian Object Theater: Laos-Japan Collaboration among Deaf and Hearing Performers”

photo of
SHIRAGA Momoko
(c) Kitagawa Sisters
photo of
Lattanakone INSISIENGMAY

As a 2023 International Creation in Performing Arts, a work-in-progress performance of this work was held in November 2023 in Tokyo following five days of research in Laos and thirteen days of joint workshops in Japan.
The project started from contact with local life, culture, and spirituality in Laos. In Japan, the two groups constructed puppets (objects) using natural materials and daily life tools that they had respectively gathered or created them by perceiving the materials themselves as living things. The performance was an experimental one that explored the relationships between objects, spaces, and human bodies while preserving the differences between the Japanese and Laotian creative approaches.
Building on the previous year’s results, in the second year of the project, the Laotian team will visit Japan in December for about three weeks of coproduction. Then, performances will be held at a venue in Kanagawa Prefecture that will go even further in exploring the communion between objects and human bodies and the world born from the layering of that communion.

Performances: Details to be announced at a later date (Venue: KAAT Kanagawa Arts Theatre)
*For more details, please refer to the website of the FOUNDATION MODERN PUPPET CENTER.

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