(*1) Junpei Kiz
Born 1969 in Aichi Prefecture. Architect. Representative of the Kiz Junpei Architectural Design Office (Kiz Architects). Graduated with a degree in architecture from the Graduate School of Tokyo University. He has worked on the space design (stage art) for Satoshi Miyagi’s productions of Mahabharata and Antigone. He has also participated in CHITEN’s productions of Kein Licht (Japanese title: Hikari no Nai), Demons (Japanese title: Akuryo), and A Sport Play (Japanese title: Supootsu-geki).
(*2) Cultivation Program
To achieve an annual requirement of 40 participants, 50 to 60 people view performances of four CHITEN repertory works and two guest performances over a period of about four months, during which time there are two lectures, after which the participants write report essays about what they have experienced. The CHITEN repertory (repertoire) works viewed by participants in the 2015 program were Fatzer, Uncle Vanya, CHITEN Kinmiraigo and CHITEN Kingendaigo, The Seagull and Cherry Orchard, and guest performances by contact Gonzo and Kukangendai and two lectures. Also, at UNDER-THROW, based on the belief that the audience are the independent supporters of artistic activities, a system was adopted by which someone’s purchase of a \2,000 ticket for a performance enables one other audience member to view a performance.
(*3) CHITEN - KAAT co-productions
Kappa / Aru Shosetsu (2011):
One of the works on the program for the opening of KAAT theater. The novel by Ryunosuke Akutagawa was adapted as a play by Tomoyuki Nagayama. The Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami occurred on the day of the premiere and all but the first performance were cancelled.
Tokatonton, to (2012):
This was the first full-scale co-production between CHITEN and the KAAT technical department planners. It was composed as a collage of excerpts from the Osamu Dazai’s short stories Tokatonton and novel Shayo (The Setting Sun). The stage art was done by the architect Riken Yamamoto.
Kakekomi Uttae (An Urgent Appeal) (2013):
This play was based on Osamu Dazai’s short story Kakekomi Uttae, a story about Judas as his love-hate relationship with Christ reaches its peak, causing him to make urgent appeals about Christ’s harshness, salacity and other apparent faults. It was performed using the same stage art as Tokatonton, to.
Demons (Japanese title: Akuryo) (2014):
Adapted from the Dostoevsky’s novel by the same title. It was stages as a play conducted continuously on the run in falling snow. The stage space was conceived by architect Junpei Kiz and costumes by Belgium-based Colette Huchard.
Three Sisters (Japanese title: Sannin Shimai) (2015):
Adaptation of the Chekhov play by the same title, it employed a movable set and vocal delivery that could only be achieved by having the actors moving about violently. The stage art was by Itaru Sugiyama and costumes by Colette Huchard.
Photo: Hisaki Matsumoto
Photo: Hisaki Matsumoto
A Sport Play (Japanese title: Supootsu-geki) (2016):
This was CHITEN’s second adaptation of a Jelinek play, staged with the same team of composer Masahiro Miwa and architect and stage art designer Junpei Kiz as with Kein Licht. The battlefield that is sports is played out on a set consisting of a giant tennis court covered in artificial turf set at a steep incline.
Photo: Takuya Matsumi
Wasureru Nihonjin (The Japanese, Who Forget) (2017):
A play based on an original script by the emerging playwright Shuntaro Matsubara. The stage art was by Itaru Sugiyama and costumes by Colette Huchard.
Photo: Natsuki Kuroda
(*4) Elfriede Jelinek:
An Austrian novelist and playwright known as one of the leaders of avant-garde post-drama theater. She won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2004 for her “musical flow of voices and counter-voices in novels and plays that, with extraordinary linguistic zeal, reveal the absurdity of society's clichés and their subjugating power.” In the wake of the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami she wrote a trilogy of plays: Kein Licht (2011), Epilogue? (2012) and Prologue?
(*5) Colette Huchard:
Born in Grenoble, France in 1951. Huchard studied dress design in Paris and later specialized in costume design, making Brussels, Belgium her base of activities from 1979 for activities in Belgium and France. She has designed costumes for numerous dance and opera productions and currently, in addition to her work in costume design, she teaches at the Conservatoire royal de Bruxelles. For many years Huchard has headed costume design for Belgium’s Compagnie Mossoux-Bonté dance company and operas directed by French director Jean-Claude Berutti. She has also participated as costume designer in the CHITEN productions of Demons, Three Sisters, A Sport Play and Hedda Gabler.
(*6) Masahiro Miwa
Contemporary music composer, media artist. President of the Institute of Advanced Media Arts and Sciences. Miwa studied music composition under Isang Yun at Berlin University of the Arts and under Günther Becker at Robert Schumann Music College. In 1985, Miwa won Honorable Mention in the Hambacher International Music Composition Competition, in 1989 he won 1st place in the 10th Irino Prize, in 1991 he won 2nd place in the Music Today Composition Contest, in 1992 he won 1st place in the 14th Luigi Russoro International Music Competition, in 1995 he won the New Artist Prize of the Muramatsu Awards, in 2007 his “Reverse Simulation Music” won the Golden Nica Award in the Digital Music Division of Prix Ars Electronica Awards. Of CHITEN productions, he has participated in Kein Licht and A Sport Play.
(*7) Mystery-Bouffe
This play is said to have been written by Mayakovsky to celebrate the first anniversary of Russia’s October Revolution (the 1917 revolt by workers and army in the Russian capital at the time, St. Petersburg). The Mystery in the title means a mystery play and Bouffe means a comedy. In the CHITEN performance, the Kukangendai band known for its odd-meter experimental music collaborated by providing music that together with the spoken words of the actors on a round stage created a festive atmosphere of celebration.
Mystery-Bouffe
(Nov. 2015 at Nishi-Sugamo Arts Factory)
Photo: Takafumi Yamanishi
(*8) Fatzer
This was the first Brecht play that CHITEN undertook as an UNDER-THROW repertory work (premiered Oct. 2013). It is an unfinished play about an army deserter in World War I named Fatzer who is hiding out in a cellar with three other fellow deserters, but they are trying to kill him because he is undermining their discipline. Motoi Miura re-composes fragments of the Brecht text into a script that is staged as a well-received music theater work built around the clash of the unique vocal delivery of the CHITEN actors and the irregular-meter music performed by the band Kukangendai.
Photo: Hisaki Matsumoto
(*9) Shuntaro Matsubara
Born 1988. His first encounter with theater was through CHITEN’s Fatzer. Matsubara’s maiden theater work Michiyuki (2015) won the Grand Prize of the 15th AAF Drama Awards. His new play Wasureru Nihonjin takes motifs from ethnologist Tsuneichi Miyamoto’s Wasurerareta Nihonjin (The Forgotten Japanese) and Maurice Blanchot’s L’Attente, l’oubli.