Playwrights’ Guide to their Own Works Vol. 5 — Kei Ando on Earthly Bones

Photo: Mayuko Yamaguchi

September 28, 2026

For the fifth installment of this series in which we ask playwrights to talk about their own work, we take a closer look at Earthly Bones by Kei Ando (Gekidan Ampersand). Humorously and energetically depicting the shockingly rapid descent from banal, everyday office interactions to the extraordinary absurdity of people turning into fish—just how did this work come about? Actor Wataru Naganuma, who has long followed Gekidan Ampersand’s activities as a fan, tugs at the threads of Ando’s creativity.

Interview and text by Wataru Naganuma
English Translation by Benjamin Cagan, Keith Spencer
(Art Translators Collective)

Gekidan Ampersand, Earthly Bones

Written and directed by Kei Ando

Performed by Daisuke Kuroda, Momoi Shimada, Daigo Shinozaki, Wako Ando, Maya Nishida, and Kei Ando
September 1–10, 2023, at Mitaka City Arts Center, Hoshi no Hall

Synopsis
Late afternoon in an office, Miyabi, an overburdened contract employee, is offered some home-cooked fish tsukudani by a more senior colleague, Yasukouchi. She declines, explaining that she will be having dinner with her father, who has come to visit from Kagoshima. Yasukouchi and the rest of the team keep telling each other, considerately, to go home early, but the reality is that they are all buried in work and can’t leave the office. With all this going on, Yasukouchi shares his fish tsukudani with everyone. Then, starting with Yasukouchi, who chokes on a fish bone, an unusual phenomenon transpires among the employees who ate the tsukudani, one by one…

List of Characters
Miyabi (Wako Ando): A contract employee, who does not eat any of the tsukudani prepared by Yasukouchi
Yasukouchi (Daisuke Kuroda): A senior colleague, who shares his fish tsukudani
Dobashi (Momoi Shimada): The team leader, swamped with having to revise the training manual
Akemi (Kei Ando): A colleague of equal seniority to Miyabi
Kaoru (Maya Nishida): About the same age as Dobashi (?), and addicted to audition shows
Tetsuo Tomoda (Daigo Shinozaki): Constantly looking for his Weider in Jelly energy drink

Character relationship chart for Earthly Bones created by Kei Ando

Notes from the chart
① Tries to give fish
② Lies
③ Says, “Go home”
④ Wants to get across she was youngest in her class
⑤ Gives fish
⑥ Gives him space
⑦ “Everyone, give him space!”

Having enjoyed so many of your works, starting with a performance of Shiru yoshi mo nai [There’s no way of knowing] in 2019 at Asakusa Gekitei, I’m delighted to have this opportunity to speak with you. To start off, could you tell us about your first experiences with theater?

My parents took me to see Shoji Kokami’s Linda Linda when I was in elementary school, and I thought it was great. Living in rural Oita, I’d never had any contact with theater before then, so that was the first theater-going experience in my life. The internet wasn’t a part of our everyday lives back then, and I was so behind the times that until around third grade I had this idea that they made TV dramas by cutting together footage from security cameras in various stores. But looking back on things, there were only so many places to play, people, and things to learn in the countryside, and I spent all of my time with my only friend of the same age in the neighborhood playing house. So, maybe that was my first experience of something kind of theatrical.

And then, what was the trajectory that led from there to you getting involved in theater yourself?

We moved to Okayama when I was in middle school, and I gradually ended up going to see famous groups like Shiki Theatre Company.¹ Around high school, I started working part-time to save money to go to Tokyo and get involved with theater, and I’d go during summer vacation and any other time that I could to Shimokitazawa² to see plays.

Were you aspiring to become an actor back then?

It’s not so much that I wanted to become an actor in particular, but I didn’t have a clue that there were also these other jobs—director, sound and lighting technicians, for example—so I thought that if I was going to work in theater, becoming an actor would be the only way. When I was in high school, I talked to an instructor at a theater vocational school open event about how I wanted to earn a living in the theater, and they said if I could become the third-ranked actor in a shingeki³ company, then I’d be able to make a living from theater work. I put all my faith in that and moved to Tokyo without attending the vocational school. But I wasn’t even able to pass the first entrance examination I tried, at Haiyuza’s research institute, so first I attended a school to get ready for admission into a theater’s training program.

A school to prepare for admission to a training program?

The pamphlet boasted that three attendees would get a place at Haiyuza’s program, but the school folded after half a year, so all the money I’d been earning working part-time in high school went down the drain.

After that, I auditioned for a few shingeki-style companies, and ultimately ended up getting into the training program at Theatrical group EN.⁴ I was in their program for two years: the first was nothing but vocal exercises and prop-making, and the second involved creating original works. We also put on independent productions at the theater, but we were a shingeki company after all, so, fundamentally speaking, we were dealing almost entirely with works by celebrated playwrights like Chekhov and Kunio Shimizu.⁵ An older superfan guy I met around then was really into small theater, and got me going to small-theater ⁶ productions, but he was so deep into that scene that I couldn’t really make sense of what we were seeing. Chekhov’s The Seagull was much more fun for me, by comparison. So, I thought I’d better stay with shingeki after all, just like that instructor had said.

Was there some turning point that got you to start writing plays, and eventually led you to your current style?

A workshop held by Shiro Maeda of Gotanndadan⁷ played a big role. I was invited by a friend I’d met through EN, and I’d never been exposed to any theater companies in the Seinendan⁸ world before, so it felt very fresh to me.

To start, Maeda was the first young, living playwright I’d ever met. I’d always thought people like Shakespeare wrote plays, so in the middle of the workshop, I was questioning whether this person could really be a playwright. On top of that, at EN there was an emphasis on delivering the lines perfectly, hitting your marks precisely, and giving yourself over to the characters from plays that had already been written, so the experience at the workshop of performing while trying to get a feel for how the audience was reacting—that was new for me. Each person’s own unique sense of humor came through during the études, and that made me realize that actors are interesting people even in their everyday lives.

After that, you went on to found Gekidan Ampersand in 2016, is that right?

Right around then, I was really into Gossip Girl.⁹ I was really taken with how the characters would get their friends together for glamorous parties, and thought I’d like to try something like that for my own birthday. But when I thought about what we would actually do when we came together, I realized that maybe what I really wanted to do was “theater.” So I booked a theater and organized a performance.

You wrote and directed it yourself, is that correct? Was there anything behind the decision to take that step?

Of course, when I was with EN, we had used existing plays, but I didn’t really know anything about how to get the necessary permission to stage them with my own group. So, I thought it would probably just be easier to write my own…. But the performance was heavily criticized, and friends who came to see it were saying things like, “That must have been rough…,” and “Why did you want to do that?”—it was a disaster.

It’s amazing that you kept on writing after a reception like that.

I’ve always had this yearning to tell people about what scares me, and have them feel the same fear. The first work I wrote was also a horror story based on real experience. When I’m writing a play, I can share things that I wouldn’t normally be able to talk to people about. And there’s also something fun about finding out what I’ve been thinking about unconsciously. I might not be particularly aware of a certain theme while I’m writing, but I’ll often realize after I’ve finished, “So that’s what I’d been thinking about.” At the moment, I’m mostly interested in writing scripts.

Shiki Theatre Company

A theater company founded by Keita Asari and others in 1953. Early on, the company staged modern French plays by Anouilh, Giraudoux, and the like, but more recently it has become famous for its long-running productions of musicals such as Cats and The Lion King, and for its nationwide tours.
Shimokitazawa

A neighborhood in Tokyo’s Setagaya Ward, known as a theater district because of the many small and medium-sized theaters concentrated there, such as Honda Theater, The Suzunari, Ekimae Theater, and Off Off Theater.
Shingeki

A movement and theatrical form that emerged from the late Meiji period onward, influenced by modern Western theater and aiming for a new theater distinct from Kabuki, shinpa (“new group”), or the like. In the postwar period, the movement was spearheaded by companies such as Bungakuza, Haiyuza, and the Mingei Theatre Company, which staged numerous translated, as well as modern and contemporary plays.
Theatrical group EN

A theater company founded by Hiroshi Akutagawa in 1975. It continues to stage a wide range of works to this day, from classical to contemporary works, both in Japan and overseas. The EN Theatre Research Group, an affiliated entity, also trains aspiring actors.
Kunio Shimizu

A playwright, director, and novelist born in Niigata Prefecture in 1936. He rose to prominence from the late 1960s through his collaborations with the director Yukio Ninagawa. Significant works include Shinjō afururu keihakusa [Such a serious frivolity], Bokura ga hijō no taiga o kudaru toki [When we sail down the river of cruelty], and Gakuya [Dressing room]. Shimizu passed away in 2021.
Small theater

Theater created principally in relatively small venues, and in which young playwrights, directors, and independent theater companies pursue their own distinct expressive forms. It developed out of the underground theater of the 1960s, and experienced a major boom in the 1980s, drawing in young audiences. Today, it comprises a wide range of styles and forms of performance.
Gotanndadan

A theater company founded in 1997 by playwright and director Shiro Maeda, and known for their style of portraying the humor and sadness lurking in everyday life with effortless dialogue and sparse stage design. Prominent works include Ikiterumono wa inainoka [No one alive here?], for which Maeda was awarded the Kishida Kunio Drama Award.
Seinendan

A theater company founded by playwright and director Oriza Hirata, among others, in 1982. It has pursued what they refer to as “contemporary colloquial theater theory,” which is characterized by everyday spoken language, multiple simultaneous conversations, and restrained performance. This approach has had a significant impact on Japanese contemporary theater from the 1990s onward.
Gossip Girl

A TV drama broadcast in the United States from 2007 to 2012, set in New York’s high-class residential Upper East Side neighborhood and depicting the turmoil of love, friendship, and family relationships for young people at a prestigious school.

So then what were you thinking about when you were writing Earthly Bones?

What came into my mind when I finished writing was “kindness.” Right now, all around us, kindness is being lost. I’m really scared that nobody seems to notice that kindness has disappeared from the world like this.

Kindness used to be something that was considered really good, for example in the way it was represented by Tora-san.¹⁰ Nowadays though, I think it’s actually considered an annoyance more than anything else. Regardless of whether that’s good or bad, I realized later that I wanted this play to record the fact of this loss of kindness. [The actor] Daisuke Kuroda plays the last person in this world, the last person in Japan, who is kind.

So he’s an endangered species. Did you have the idea from the start to have Kuroda’s character, Yasukouchi, turn into a fish?

Well, it came about once Kuroda’s performance in Earthly Bones was decided. I was imagining a lot of different things, but my starting point was a desire to see Kuroda turn into a fish onstage.

Lots of times when I’m writing a play, I come up with the setting and the characters by envisioning the actors who will be performing. In terms of this particular play, I thought how Maya Nishida seemed like someone who would get a sense of accomplishment from their work by getting angry, or how Daigo Shinozaki seemed like someone who would be a really good person, but who would seem to always be in a different dimension and not really be listening to what other people said. These were the kinds of things that came to my mind, and were what led to creating characters like Kaoru and Tetsuo Tomoda. Of course, this is just an image that I’m completely making up based on these actors, so it’s not necessarily a reflection of who they actually are, but I do think these characterizations help draw out what makes each of them interesting. It’s fun when the actor seems like someone who would do something different than myself because I come up with all sorts of ideas.

Earthly Bones, 2023. From left to right: Tomoda (Daigo Shinozaki), Miyabi (Wako Ando), and Yasukouchi (Daisuke Kuroda).

I see. The delightfulness of the props that are used to bring an idea to life, and their raw, unfinished quality, is another defining feature of Gekidan Ampersand. I was cracking up at the absurdity of the little fish stuck to the end of the black bags that the actors wore in Earthly Bones.

What was important about the Earthly Bones props was not so much how real the fish looked, but whether the actors’ bodies could be completely hidden. I came up with that approach to make it so that the actors’ bodies would disappear and only a fish would be left behind. We were forced to make everything ourselves when we were first starting out, so it was inevitable that things would look cheap. I’m not very good at this kind of work, but one of the other company members, Yuma Fukami, is very skilled, so I give her the materials and my idea for what to do, and she always does a wonderful job of making it a reality.

Meaning that if the scale of your performances increases, there’s a chance the props will also be higher quality?

I’m not sure. I might be partial to props that require a total effort on the part of the actors to make them convincing. I agree it’s funny to see the physicality, so I might be choosing to make the props in that way because I want to see the actors struggling on the stage. The way the characters are shouting at each other in a panic over whether someone is going to turn into a fish, and the sight of the actor struggling to handle the props as they’re trying to turn into a fish, are both things that I want to see on the stage.

A lot of your plays are set in workplaces.

It’s really embarrassing for me to write plays about families. There’s always some fiction involved, regardless of the setting, but it’s too much of a leap to have actors playing family members when in reality they aren’t related. For instance, there’s that MUFG Bank commercial where Satomi Ishihara calls Takuya Kimura “brother.” I would be so embarrassed if that were me. I mean, everyone knows that those two aren’t siblings, right? I try my best not to do anything embarrassing like that—I just have such a strong aversion to it. I might be someone who feels more embarrassment compared to other people. With a setting like a workplace that’s closer to the actual relationship of the actors who are all gathered together in a single place to work, I’m able to write in a way that’s also convincing for myself. That’s probably the reason why so many of my plays are set in workplaces. Still, I want to expand my playwriting, so I would like to get to a point where I’m able to write about families.

Now that you mention it, Soredokoro janai [Now is not the time]¹¹ was the one time I wrote about a couple. I thought that I might be able to do it if I wrote about a couple that was completely unrelated by blood, but it was still really embarrassing. But that was based on a true story that my father experienced, so I suppose there wasn’t much I could do about that….

Sorry, what was the plot of Soredokoro janai?

It’s about a husband who becomes possessed by a ghost with a long neck as he’s on his way to the office, and his neck also gets longer.

Soredokoro janai, 2022.　Photo: Tetsuya Matsushita

…I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that. Now that you mention it, Earthly Bones is a prime example of how you do the writing and directing for Gekidan Ampersand’s works, and you often act in them as well. What is the reason for this?

Both writing and directing are easier for me if I’m performing as well.

From the perspective of the writer, a big factor is that I don’t have to worry about myself. I ask my favorite actors to perform in these works, so I want to take advantage of their individual uniqueness and tend to give all the characters strong personalities. But when it comes to my own role, I don’t have to be as meticulous, and I can adjust the overall balance. To give an extreme example, if there’s someone I want to die at the start of a play, I feel bad asking that of an actor that I went to the trouble of inviting. If it’s myself though, I have no qualms about killing them.

In terms of directing, it’s easier for me to understand what’s happening in a scene if I’m in the middle of it as one of the actors, rather than giving instructions from the sidelines. I’m also able to intuitively understand why this person in this place wouldn’t say this line and how that’s preventing the scene from working. I can adjust things based on how I’m actually feeling, and I think it makes it easier for the actors to understand what I’m doing as well.

I’ve never been good at giving verbal acting instructions. I’ve been told it’s not good for a director to provide demonstrations of the kind of acting they’re wanting, but if I say something like, “Be sad here,” isn’t that going to mean different things to different people? But if I do it myself, then everyone will understand what I mean by “sad.” I have experience performing with actors in a lot of different scenes, so I think it’s easy for them to take what I say not as a request to copy me, but as a single point of reference.

I was really struck by the spit-spraying passion of Kuroda’s performance.

Working with someone like Kuroda, who puts everything he has into his acting, made me aware of the difference between him and someone like myself who’s acting from a directorial position. “Actor” is really the only word to describe him.

Tora-san

This is the nickname of Torajirō Kuruma, the main character played by Kiyoshi Atsumi in Otoko wa tsurai yo [It’s tough being a man], directed by Yōji Yamada. Tora-san is an itinerant vendor beloved as a man with a deep sense of duty and kindness despite the trouble stirred up by his meddlesome tendencies.
Soredokoro janai [Now is not the time]

This Gekidan Ampersand play was first performed as part of the 2021 Kanagawa Short Drama Award, and was performed in an extended version in 2022. The play is about a husband who becomes possessed by a ghost with a long neck as he’s on his way to the office. As his body changes, the couple’s daily life takes an unexpected turn.

A reading of Earthly Bones was performed at New York’s Japan Society in May 2026,¹² and apparently you were there in person to see it. Gekidan Ampersand doesn’t have many works that are performed without your direction, so I’m curious to know what the reaction was at this opportunity to have it presented overseas.

With the cast and crew of the reading of Earthly Bones staged in New York, 2026

It was a really enjoyable experience! I was really happy that the audience seemed to be shocked, screaming or shouting, “Oh my God!” when the characters started turning into fish. That doesn’t really happen in Japan. And even though it was a reading, the performers were all moving around quite a lot, and actually used their bodies to show that they were turning into fish. It wasn’t the type of direction that I would have given myself, but the actors were all physically very strong, so I was able to enjoy my experience watching it.

The term “evil spirit” comes up in the work, and I was struck by a question that I got during the rehearsal: “Evil according to what religion?” In Japan we can just say “evil spirit” and that’s enough, but they were trying to define which set of parameters was determining the evilness of the spirit. I found that difference interesting.

The characters are all extremely considerate of one another when it comes to generosity and work, a typical sort of Japanese environment, you could say. Was that something that translated for US audiences?

At first the local producer talked about how Japanese it was. But it’s normal in the US as well for people to be considerate of one another in order to avoid ruining relationships. One of the things we talked about was how, for example, if I had baked cookies and brought them for everyone at the rehearsal studio, everyone would probably say thank you and eat them, whatever they really thought about it. In terms of work, however, it’s easy for people to think that you’re incompetent if you work overtime, so there might be a difference there. But even in a Japanese workplace, I don’t think it’s common for everyone to be trying to take on each other’s work the way it’s described in the play.

Of course, proper nouns like “Weider in Jelly” (the name of a nutritional jelly drink supplement for use when busy), and geographical information like the distance between Tokyo and Kagoshima are things that are difficult for non-Japanese audiences to understand, but there were surprisingly few parts where I felt like the flow of the story couldn’t be understood.

Are you thinking about working overseas again in the future?

Well, there was a Q&A session at the reading performance in New York, and everyone was so eager, raising their hands and asking questions. “What is the feeling you hope audiences come away from Earthly Bones with?” “Are you strange, or is it Japan that’s strange?” These were questions I don’t really hear in Japan, which was great. Not only that, every time I said something everyone laughed. It’s the biggest reaction I’ve gotten out of anything I’ve done so far, so it was a really enjoyable time. That’s why I’m now thinking I’d like to find a job overseas doing nothing but Q&A sessions.

By the way, are you strange, or is it Japan that’s strange?

It’s Japan.

Your work domestically is also gradually increasing in scale.

In the fall of 2026, we’ll be performing Tachidomaru niha chikasugiru [Too close to stop] in cities outside of Tokyo for the first time. Eventually I’d like to also tour through Kochi, Oita, and Okayama Prefectures since those are the places I was born and raised. Like I said earlier, I never really had a chance to come into contact with theater as a child. When I was in high school, I participated in a theater workshop in Tokyo, and there was another high schooler the same age as me who was from the Kanto region. They asked me what my favorite theater company was. I had no idea, so I just said the Shiki Theatre Company. Their answer was “Yukiko Motoya.” I thought it was cool how they said the full name, but I was also shocked at the difference in our knowledge. I hope this performance can help a local middle schooler or high schooler to learn more about all the varieties of theater.

Earthly Bones English reading performance

This performance was held by the Japan Society in New York. It was translated by Kazue Peck, and directed by Lauren Zeftel. A post-performance Q&A session with Ando and the director was also held.

Performance information
Gekidan Ampersand
Tachidomaru ni wa chikasugiru [Too close to stop]
Written and directed by Kei Ando
Performed by Hairi Katagiri, Natsu Fukui, Wakaba Nagai, Wako Ando, Yui Nishide, and Kei Ando
Tokyo: October 28–November 1, 2026, at Shinjuku Theater Tops
Mie: November 7–8, 2026, at the Mie Center for the Arts Theater
Sapporo: November 14–15, 2026, at ConCarino Cultural Lifestyle Support Facility

Photo: Mayuko Yamaguchi

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