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Feb. 7, 2019

18th AAF Drama Award’s Grand Prize winner is Kuchita habikoru

The “AAF Drama Award” was started by the Aichi Arts Foundation in 2000 with the objective of exploring the question of what theater can and should be. Plays are solicited with the intention of staging performances of them and five plays are selected through primary and secondary judging sessions as finalist candidates. For the finalists of the 109 applicants for the 2019 prize, the open Grand Prize jury session was held on January 6th, and the Grand Prize winner was Aki Yamanouchi’s Kuchita habikoru, while the Special Prize went to a high school student, Suzu Watanabe (Minamiyama Senior High School Girls Drama Club) for her play By us.

Aki Yamanouchi is a member of the directing department of the theater company Seinendan, and the prize-winning work this time is a longer version of the play Inclusion performed with direction by Momo Hachisu of the same Seinendan directing department in Tokyo in May of 2018. The setting is a “fictional ruin” and the story is written on the themes of the impermanence of buildings, the prosperity of culture and the residual quality of ideas. This winning play and the other nominated finalist plays are shown on the Aichi Prefectural Arts Theater website.

Winner’s profile
Aki Yamanouchi
Graduated from the Theater Department of Nihon University College of Art. She is the leader of the performing arts group Kiligs (former group name: AnK), a member of Kabujo (Kabuki Women’s College) and the directing department of Seinendan. Yamanouchi is responsible for writing and directing all of the plays of Kiligs and Kabujo. Her aim is performing arts that have romance or are romantic and she creates unique worlds that contain elements of inspiring culture (traditions, Joruri (Japanese traditional ballad dramas), club music, mangas, etc.). In 2014, she won the Best Directing award of the Sato Saikichi Awards for (directing the play Henalede) and the Special Prize of the 2017 AAF Drama Awards (name of play: Hakuchi wo warauka).

Nominated Works
Kuchita habikoru by Aki Yamanouchi
Sugoi Kikai by Naoya Wagatsuma
by us by Suzu Watanabe
Yakutatazu! by Furukawa Toshimasa
Wattsui Jinmin no teki by Katsumi Sasaki
Jury: Chiharu Shinoda (director, writer, eventer), Kohei Narumi (Dainanagekijo representative, director), Shirotama Hitsujiya (director, playwright, actor, artistic director of Yubiwa Hotel), Motoi Miura (CHITEN representative, director), Miwa Yanagi (artist)

18th AAF Drama Award (Japanese only)
https://www-stage.aac.pref.aichi.jp/event/archive/detail2018/18_aaf_bosyu/