Mai Ishiguro
Mai Ishiguro: A Unique Take on Colloquial Drama by a Groundbreaking Late Bloomer
Photo: Atsuharu Ino
July 24, 2026
Photo: Atsuharu Ino
Mai Ishiguro
Born in Ibaraki prefecture, Mai Ishiguro is a playwright, director, actor, and founder of Gekidan-Futsu. After graduating from university, Ishiguro worked as a programmer while attending theater school, and in 2013 founded Gekidan-Futsu in order to stage her own plays. While weaving together different activities, including joint performances with other theater troupes, and providing scripts, direction, and acting for external troupes, she continues to hone her skills in pursuit of her own unique acting style and worldview. In 2025, Ishiguro received the Award for Outstanding Director for Secret and KISETSU-seasons- at the 33rd Yomiuri Theater Awards, and in 2026, KISETSU-seasons- was selected as a finalist for the 70th Kishida Kunio Drama Award. In addition to her own work, Ishiguro has a number of commissioned writing and directing projects planned, with considerable attention being paid towards her future activities.
Although this description may not be fitting since she founded her theater company in 2013, Mai Ishiguro has an aura of a groundbreaking late bloomer. The defining characteristic of Gekidan-Futsu, which she leads, is that the Ibaraki dialect from her hometown prefecture (located approximately 100 kilometers northeast of Tokyo with a population of about 2.8 million) is used throughout. At first, the minutiae of daily life narrated with a rugged intonation invites laughter, but through their repetition, the audience senses a perspective that quietly denounces the claustrophobic atmosphere that plagues Japan and the larger world. Amid long hours at the office desk, Ishiguro encountered theater as a working adult in search of a way to get some physical exercise. Drawing on her copious reading during childhood, she quickly developed a unique style without the aid of established source material. Given her 70th Kishida Kunio Drama Award nomination for her work as a playwright for KISETSU-seasons-, and the critical acclaim for her directorial efforts, the theater world is hotly anticipating Mai Ishiguro’s forthcoming work.
Interview and text by Kyoko Tokunaga
English Translation: Hibiki Mizuno, Keith Spencer (Art Translators Collective)
You started your career in theater after working a corporate job. Could you first tell us about your childhood and how you grew up?
I was a reserved child who was just always reading books. I grew up with my parents and a brother who is four years older than me, and living in the suburbs we had a lot of time, so I was just going through every book I could find in the house. I was reading children’s literature but also Jiro Akagawa’s mystery novels that my brother was into, or Kuniko Mukoda’s essays that my mother was reading, or books on jazz and stereos and really thick historical texts about Musashi Miyamoto in my father’s library. I was the kind of child who would fall asleep at night with a book in hand, and maybe that was responsible for how well I did in Japanese class.
So you were really just absorbing texts like it was second nature to you. When did you become aware of your own preference in terms of the kind of books you liked?
I was able to make a lot of friends in high school who had similar interests, and I was really influenced by some of them who had read every work by their favorite author, or had read most period novels, for example. I couldn’t keep up with their conversations if I didn’t read, so it was like I was tackling all the famous literary authors that would come up in textbooks, starting in alphabetical order.
Soon enough, being a high schooler and all that, I was seeking some kind of stimulation and I sought that out through reading. That being said, it wasn’t that I was searching for really intense material, but rather that I was seeking new ideas and ways of thinking. And in that process I became obsessed with Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. It was split into three thick paperback books and I almost gave up so many times because I couldn’t remember the names of all the characters, but still I kept reading it.
Soon enough, being a high schooler and all that, I was seeking some kind of stimulation and I sought that out through reading. That being said, it wasn’t that I was searching for really intense material, but rather that I was seeking new ideas and ways of thinking. And in that process I became obsessed with Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. It was split into three thick paperback books and I almost gave up so many times because I couldn’t remember the names of all the characters, but still I kept reading it.
In college, you majored in philosophy, which is not generally known to be an advantageous degree to have in terms of career prospects. Did you have certain aspirations at the time or goals for after you graduated?
My parents had one wish for me, which was that they wanted me to pursue a career in the medical field. My father’s relative was doing that kind of work, so he felt that it would be a good job in terms of being of help to people in a tangible way. And if that didn’t work out, I could pursue whatever I wanted.
I chose to major in philosophy because I wanted to gain a deeper understanding of The Brothers Karamazov. I read somewhere that I had to understand Heidegger’s Being and Time in order to fully grasp The Brothers Karamazov, so I decided to focus on Western philosophy. In reality, though, I became more interested in a contemporary philosophy within that focus that was closer to the fields of linguistics and natural sciences, so I ultimately chose linguistic philosophy for my thesis and ended up writing about Willard van Orman Quine.
I chose to major in philosophy because I wanted to gain a deeper understanding of The Brothers Karamazov. I read somewhere that I had to understand Heidegger’s Being and Time in order to fully grasp The Brothers Karamazov, so I decided to focus on Western philosophy. In reality, though, I became more interested in a contemporary philosophy within that focus that was closer to the fields of linguistics and natural sciences, so I ultimately chose linguistic philosophy for my thesis and ended up writing about Willard van Orman Quine.
I graduated at the time of the Employment Ice Age, so finding a job was just as hard as you mentioned. At first I was hoping to land a job in the publishing industry, but it didn’t pan out, so I got a job at an electronic appliance company. I took that offer because the company was involved in projects that were serving the public as well. Maybe I was influenced by my parents’ hope that I would find a job that would help other people.
The company placed me in the software development team based on an idea that was gaining popularity at the time of incorporating humanities majors into software development. Everybody around me was a STEM major, and I had to teach myself programming from scratch after landing the job. Although I really struggled with it, it was also interesting.
The company placed me in the software development team based on an idea that was gaining popularity at the time of incorporating humanities majors into software development. Everybody around me was a STEM major, and I had to teach myself programming from scratch after landing the job. Although I really struggled with it, it was also interesting.
And then you finally encountered the world of theater. I heard that you started attending a theater school as a kind of after-work hobby.
Exactly. I wanted to do something physical because my job was so sedentary, so at first one of my colleagues I was friends with invited me to try boxercise. It didn’t click for me though, so I kept looking for something else to do and ended up Googling “theater, workshop,” which is how I found the school.
In all the reading of different essays that I did, I always found the writings of Koki Mitani and Suzuki Matsuo really interesting, so I had this vague idea that theater would be interesting, too.
The first theater school that came up in my search was one in Ueno. It was open to anyone, students and working adults alike, and I appreciated how the website was upfront in saying that they weren’t going to teach anything that would help you become a successful actor or anything, so I signed up for it.
I was thrown into a reading in my first class, and we also did some gestural word chains and other physical games, all of which I really enjoyed. It was a very relaxed school where you could come whenever you wanted and participation in performances wasn’t mandatory. Although they didn’t teach anything theoretical either, what was most memorable was how they were strict when it came to people trying to make something interesting or do something well.
When somebody would be acting and I would be watching, thinking they were doing a really good job, the teacher would say something like, “It’s not working because you’re thinking about how good of a job you’re doing. That’s a nonstarter.” I’m really grateful that they taught me how it’s more important that your heart is in the work, that you’re really having fun, rather than being nominally proficient at a bunch of different things. I kept attending classes there and played a few roles in Shoji Kokami’s Snufkin’s Letter for my first workshop performance.
In all the reading of different essays that I did, I always found the writings of Koki Mitani and Suzuki Matsuo really interesting, so I had this vague idea that theater would be interesting, too.
The first theater school that came up in my search was one in Ueno. It was open to anyone, students and working adults alike, and I appreciated how the website was upfront in saying that they weren’t going to teach anything that would help you become a successful actor or anything, so I signed up for it.
I was thrown into a reading in my first class, and we also did some gestural word chains and other physical games, all of which I really enjoyed. It was a very relaxed school where you could come whenever you wanted and participation in performances wasn’t mandatory. Although they didn’t teach anything theoretical either, what was most memorable was how they were strict when it came to people trying to make something interesting or do something well.
When somebody would be acting and I would be watching, thinking they were doing a really good job, the teacher would say something like, “It’s not working because you’re thinking about how good of a job you’re doing. That’s a nonstarter.” I’m really grateful that they taught me how it’s more important that your heart is in the work, that you’re really having fun, rather than being nominally proficient at a bunch of different things. I kept attending classes there and played a few roles in Shoji Kokami’s Snufkin’s Letter for my first workshop performance.
How do you think you were able to perform in front of an audience right away, without any hesitation, when you were always more of an introvert growing up?
I think that’s the serendipity with theater. For some reason though, and I really don’t know why, when it comes to theater, the ideas just flow out of me. Everything feels worth it when I get a response to what I’ve done, and it comes very naturally to me to look back on the things I’ve done and think what I could’ve improved on or new things to try next time. I had never experienced anything like this in my life before.
I also think that even though I was trying to improve my acting, the fact that the school was closed off, in a good way, and not competitive worked in my favor so that all I had to focus on was reaching a level of acting that felt satisfying for myself. I would go to the school, say hi to everyone, and then just focus on exploring my own world. I was never compared to anyone else, which I think was a really good aspect. If I had been exposed to any kind of competition at the start, I think I would’ve given up right away.
That’s why I didn’t have this ambition to go out into the world and gain approval. Toward the end of my time at the school, I spent about two years just repeating a few pages of Shogo Ota’s play 1, which was initially assigned in class, instead of participating in any workshop performances, just because it was fun for me.
I also think that even though I was trying to improve my acting, the fact that the school was closed off, in a good way, and not competitive worked in my favor so that all I had to focus on was reaching a level of acting that felt satisfying for myself. I would go to the school, say hi to everyone, and then just focus on exploring my own world. I was never compared to anyone else, which I think was a really good aspect. If I had been exposed to any kind of competition at the start, I think I would’ve given up right away.
That’s why I didn’t have this ambition to go out into the world and gain approval. Toward the end of my time at the school, I spent about two years just repeating a few pages of Shogo Ota’s play 1, which was initially assigned in class, instead of participating in any workshop performances, just because it was fun for me.
-
Shogo Ota
Shogo Ota (1939—2007) was a playwright and director who, along with Shuji Terayama and Juro Kara, led the contemporary Japanese theater scene from the 60s to the early 2000s. As seen in The Water Station, one of his major works, he established a style of theater known as “silent play,” which eliminated all dialogue.
In 2013, Gekiyou established Gekidan-Futsu and presented your first piece Cosmophobia. Can you tell us how you ended up founding a theater company when you were focusing on exploring your own world?
As part of our voluntary class assignment, we were asked to make a 15-minute one-person show. You could ask someone else to write the script or direct, get someone else at the school to do the lighting and sound operation, or do everything on your own. So that was where I presented my own piece that I created and directed. It was basically all movement, but there was still a plot for the character, a kind of Theatre of the Absurd piece, or a silent drama. Although it was very minimal, I really enjoyed the process of creating an entire performance, and it made me want to try more. So then I started talking about it to a younger woman who was also attending the school, and we got excited and decided to try something together.
Also, and this may be hard to follow because the chronology is all mixed up, but it was right around that time that I came up with the idea for Hospital Room (premiered in 2019 and restaged in 2021 and 2024), and wrote a script about seven pages long that’s basically the same as the one for the actual performance. I couldn’t finish it at the time though, so I settled on writing a short novel of about a dozen pages or so, in order to not forget the plot development for myself. I was just trying to put something down on paper, and not particularly thinking about the end goal.
Also, and this may be hard to follow because the chronology is all mixed up, but it was right around that time that I came up with the idea for Hospital Room (premiered in 2019 and restaged in 2021 and 2024), and wrote a script about seven pages long that’s basically the same as the one for the actual performance. I couldn’t finish it at the time though, so I settled on writing a short novel of about a dozen pages or so, in order to not forget the plot development for myself. I was just trying to put something down on paper, and not particularly thinking about the end goal.
-
Hospital Room, premiere（2019） Mai Ishiguro, second from left Photo: Kenta Fukushima
If your first original work was an almost entirely silent theatrical production, was the prototype of Hospital Room the first instance where you wrote the dialogue yourself?
Yes, that might have been the first one. I had set it aside though and spent a year writing a different script for the company’s debut performance. At the time I deviated quite a bit [from the world of Hospital Room] and created a lot of dialogue, even going so far as to make the delivery of the lines feel like they were being sung. As I continued to write, the dialogue became more focused, and I felt like I reached a good point with Sisters (3rd revival performance held in 2016). It was a project I started without knowing where it would lead, but later on I decided to continue it on my own.
Sisters can be seen as a prototype for Gekidan-Futsu’s current work. The dialogue develops in bits and pieces, almost like you’re listening in on a conversation at the next table over at a coffee shop. The audience has to decipher the relationships between the characters and their different backgrounds based only on limited vocabulary, word order, and hesitations in their speech. Eventually these small fragments of information lead to an unexpected picture, creating a fully realized composition that allows the viewer to contemplate profound emotions and larger social structures despite the short-form format.
-
Sisters（2016） Miho Shimao（left）and Mai Ishiguro（right） Photo: Yukiharu Obi
Although I clearly wanted to write about something, I felt like I was still lacking the ability to do so, so I kept grappling with that question as we were doing our performances. I wanted to write something that had the realism I was trying to achieve with Hospital Room. Probably the main reason is because it’s incredibly difficult to share a theater piece based on realism with an audience and gauge to what extent the audience connects with that realism. Of course, information is something that only comes from the person speaking, so the question is how much you’re willing to incorporate that into the dialogue. Real-life conversation isn’t something that’s pre-planned: people misspeak, have trouble answering questions, don’t hear certain things, or intentionally ignore what someone else says. This means that people very rarely have complete conversations. I’ve constantly been researching, in my own way, how to weave these different elements together and turn them into realistic conversations that I can share with the audience.
Specifically, I put on three new plays in 2018 (Exchanging in January, Pest in May, and Castle in July) and I used a different approach for each one. I tried to make the dialogue in Exchanging as realistic as possible, so I cut as much information as possible. With Pest, I had the actors do improvisational exercises during rehearsals in order to produce realistic conversations and then I used that as the basis for the dialogue in the play. The third play, Castle, I wrote with the goal of making it engaging to read as a text, so I put a lot of emotion into the lines. There were a lot of different reactions from the audience, and I felt like I was beginning to understand things a bit better, so in 2019 I finally finished writing the script for the performance of Hospital Room.
-
Exchanging（2018）
Photo: Kenta Fukushima -
Pest（2018）
Photo: Moe Hosaka -
Castle（2018）
Photo: Kenta Fukushima
Hospital Room is a dialogue-driven drama set in a shared hospital room that features conversations between patients, patients and their visiting family members, and the hospital staff, all spoken entirely in the Ibaraki dialect. Written in a sparse, realistic tone sprinkled with moments of humor, it’s an excellent work that portrays things that can’t be said in certain settings, the truth that slips out, things that can’t remain hidden, and the disparities in the characters’ lives and sense of time. What made you pursue realistic dialogue in this work?
It probably has something to do with what I was taught in the theater school regarding what makes something really interesting, and whether something is true or not. Whenever I’m trying to come up with dialogue, I have moments where I realize the lines I’m thinking of are just there to explain a situation, or because they’re simply convenient for me as the author. When this happens, I think back to conversations that people around me usually have and how they respond in specific situations. In a real conversation, there are no lies. It’s something I came to learn later on, but I feel that everything essential is contained in daily conversation.
Speaking of which, realistic dialogue in theater emerged in the latter half of the 1990s as a style called “quiet theater” and featured jumbled word order, background noise like unnecessary responses and pauses, and multiple people talking at once. This style was systematized by Oriza Hirata who coined it “contemporary colloquial theater” and it spread among young theater professionals throughout Japan. What’s really interesting is that while you’ve achieved a level of realism that is, in a sense, exemplary of contemporary colloquial theater, you haven’t touched upon Hirata’s works at all.
It’s been a strange confluence of events, but I never studied Hirata’s works, even though people who see Gekidan-Futsu’s plays often tell me that they get a sense of his style, so I bought and read about ten books related to contemporary colloquial theater. I felt they very clearly articulated things.
The theater people that have come up in this interview so far are Koki Mitani, Suzuki Matsuo, Shoji Kokami, Shogo Ota, which is a really interesting list [laughs]. You’ve been told that your work is similar to that of Yasujiro Ozu’s, but you’ve never even seen an Ozu film.
That’s right [laughs].
-
Secret, premiere（2022）
Photo: Kenta Fukushima -
Spring, 2026
Photo: Kenta Fukushima
Do you intend to continue writing plays in the Ibaraki dialect?
The reason I started writing plays in the Ibaraki dialect is because the idea for Hospital Room came to me through something that happened in Ibaraki, so I thought it would be better to write it in that dialect. If I were to have written it in standard Japanese, I feel like it would have been hard to understand why those people with those [unique regional] characteristics were talking about those things. Now that you mention it, I had the opportunity to speak with Momoji Yamada [who mainly creates plays in the Tsugaru dialect] of Whey, and we talked about how the environment can have an effect on people. For example, how the physical features of a place, like a mountain, can separate people from each other. It’s interesting to think how, even though it’s the same Japanese, a regional dialect is like its own unique language carrying all of these different non-linguistic elements like emotions, history, and expressions that are all mixed together. I think the reason I can write in the Ibaraki dialect so vividly, or rather, the reason I’m able to convey something of its charm, is because of the accumulation of experiences I’ve had since I was a child, and because it was the first language I was exposed to.
However, having written so many works in the Ibaraki dialect, I’m worried whether I’ll be able to write in standard Japanese. I’d like to make a work that’s written in standard Japanese, because I’ve actually lived in Tokyo for longer than I’ve lived in Ibaraki. One day, when all that time has accumulated within me and can naturally be expressed, I’d like to try writing in standard Japanese. When it comes to realism, it’s important to consider how real it actually feels to me.
The other day, I was able to realize a long-held dream of performing in Ibaraki (the 2026 KISETSU-seasons– performance at Mito Art Tower’s ACM Theatre). I was also able to visit Hyogo prefecture in the Kansai region for the first time to participate in the [2020] Toyooka Theater Festival, and the response there was tremendous. I was really happy because I’d been wondering how people in far off places would respond to a northern Kanto dialect, and it has made me want to visit more places with their own unique dialects, like Kyushu and Osaka. I’ve heard that Matsumoto in Nagano prefecture also has a thriving theater scene, so I’d like to go there as well. People often tell me how nice it would be if I could do these performances overseas, and recently I’ve been thinking a lot about how to express dialect. For example, how would these lines be translated if they were English subtitles?
However, having written so many works in the Ibaraki dialect, I’m worried whether I’ll be able to write in standard Japanese. I’d like to make a work that’s written in standard Japanese, because I’ve actually lived in Tokyo for longer than I’ve lived in Ibaraki. One day, when all that time has accumulated within me and can naturally be expressed, I’d like to try writing in standard Japanese. When it comes to realism, it’s important to consider how real it actually feels to me.
The other day, I was able to realize a long-held dream of performing in Ibaraki (the 2026 KISETSU-seasons– performance at Mito Art Tower’s ACM Theatre). I was also able to visit Hyogo prefecture in the Kansai region for the first time to participate in the [2020] Toyooka Theater Festival, and the response there was tremendous. I was really happy because I’d been wondering how people in far off places would respond to a northern Kanto dialect, and it has made me want to visit more places with their own unique dialects, like Kyushu and Osaka. I’ve heard that Matsumoto in Nagano prefecture also has a thriving theater scene, so I’d like to go there as well. People often tell me how nice it would be if I could do these performances overseas, and recently I’ve been thinking a lot about how to express dialect. For example, how would these lines be translated if they were English subtitles?
-
KISETSU-seasons- (2025) Photo: Kenta Fukushima
Given that the vast majority of people begin their acting careers when they’re still students, what are your thoughts on your own career as a late bloomer?
I think it’s been good for me. When I think about wanting to continue doing theater for a long time and to have as many people as possible see my work, from a practical standpoint there are a lot of things that I need to get done. And even before all of that there’s the important task of working with people through rehearsals. Because I used to be painfully shy, it was really good for me to interact with a lot of different people as a working adult.
As with the regional performances I mentioned earlier, my world has gotten so much bigger because of theater, so my dream right now is to engage with lots of different regions and countries through this art form. I also want to get the word out to more young people that this is a viable option for them.
As with the regional performances I mentioned earlier, my world has gotten so much bigger because of theater, so my dream right now is to engage with lots of different regions and countries through this art form. I also want to get the word out to more young people that this is a viable option for them.
【Performance Information】
PARCO PRODUCE 2026 Le Mari de la coiffeuse
Based on the film Le Mari de la coiffeuse (Directed by Patrice Leconte, Screenplay by Patrice Leconte and Claude Klotz)
Stage adaption and direction by: Mai Ishiguro (Gekidan-Futsu)
Cast: Shota Yasuda, Eriko Nakamura, Tomomi Maruyama, Fusako Urabe, Jin Muraki, Ryo Yomatsu, Kosuke Asai, Kimio Taketani, Kyuichiro Nakayama, and Saori Kouzuki
Tokyo
September 28 – October 25, 2026
New National Theatre, Tokyo – The Pit
Hiroshima
November 5–6, 2026
JMS Aster Plaza – Grand Hall
Osaka
November 12–20, 2026
Morinomiya Piloti Hall
-
Photo: Atsuharu Ino