Oriza Hirata | The Santa Claus Conference (Adult version)

Oriza Hirata

Born in Tokyo in 1962, Oriza Hirata is a playwright and director and the leader of the theater company Seinendan. He is also the artistic director of the Komaba Agora Theater in Tokyo and artistic director of Kinosaki International Arts Center. He is a specially appointed professor of the Organization for COI at the National University of the Arts, Tokyo, a visiting professor and special counsel to the president of Shikoku Gakuin University, a visiting professor at the Kyoto Bunkyo University, he is president of the Theater Professional Conference of the Japan Performing Arts Foundation, manager of the Fujimi Municipal Hall Kirari Fujimi, a director of the Japanese Society for Theatre Research, a director of the Japan Foundation for Regional Art Activities, a cultural policy advisor for Toyooka City, and a director of the Nagi Town Education, Culture and Community Development committee.
At the age of 16 Hirata took a leave from high school and set off to travel around the world by bicycle, eventually riding through 26 countries worldwide over the course of 18 months. In 1984, he graduated from the Liberal Arts School of the International Christian University in Tokyo. During his time at the university he formed the Seinendan theater company. In his Junior year at the university, Hirata got a scholarship to study abroad at South Korea’s Yonsei University for one year.
He won the 39th Kishida Kunio Drama Award for playwriting with Tokyo Notes in 1995, after which he won many prizes up until 2019, when he won the 22nd Tsuruya Nanboku Drama Award for History of the Rise and Fall of Japanese Literature . In 2006, he won the Montblanc de la Culture Arts Patronage Award. In 2011, he was awarded the L’Ordre des Arts et des Letters of the French Ministry of Culture.
Oriza Hirata has been one of the key figures in the contemporary theater scene in Japan with his “contemporary colloquial theater theory.” He has actively undertaken many collaborative productions abroad, in countries including France, South Korea, China. From 2008 to 2013, he served as chairman of the Japanese committee for the BeSeTo theater festival. Also, at his public small-theater Komaba Agora Theater he has pursued the education and nurturing of young theater makers. He has also achieved notable achievements in the areas of communication education through theater and theater instruction at the university level. Through his activities as artistic director at public theaters and publications like his book Geijutsu Rikkoku Ron (Arts as the Basis of a Nation, 2002) and other efforts, he has remained an opinion leader in the field of public policy concerning the arts and culture at the national and local government levels.

On a stage are one large hemispherical conference table and in their circle is a bed. There a child (an actor doubling in the mother role) sleeps. By the pillow on the bed hangs a large stocking. At the back of the stage is a fireplace with a chimney large enough for a person to pass through.

Jingle Bells is playing in the background, and as the volume increases slightly with the lighting falling only on the bed, the child slowly wakes. The child looks in the stocking with delight. Getting off the bed and crawling under the conference table, the child goes to the back of the stage and disappears through the fireplace.

The “Santa Claus Conference” that is held each year as the Christmas season approaches is about to begin. The participants for this, the 833rd conference, begin to arrive in twos and threes, father and mother, the teachers. This year’s subject is “What Do You Ask Santa Claus For? ” When the three children sitting on the audience side are asked their opinions, the only childlike answer that comes back is a soccer ball. The adults are perplexed to hear the other requests for a motorcycle and a father.

Finally it comes time when Professor Gamigami, who calls himself an expert on Christmas, launches into his pet theory that there is no Santa Claus to begin with and a heated debate begins concerning the existence of Santa Claus between him and Professor Garigari, who claims to be an authority on Santa Claus. It appears that this debate is one of the fixtures of the Santa Claus Conference that occurs every year.

The volume of the background Jingle Bells music grows and a spotlight focuses on the bed. The child (doubling as the mother) who had snuck out of the conference at some point and is now sleeping in the bed slowly awakes. She looks in the stocking with delight, gets off the bed, crawls under the conference table toward the back of the stage and disappears through the fireplace.

As the lights come up the 834th Santa Claus Conference begins. The subject this time is “How Does One Meet Santa Claus? ” One of the participants is a witch who supposedly meets Santa Claus often, and when one of the members of the conference questions whether she is really a witch, she uses her magic to turn him into a pig. When one of the mothers, apparently displeased with how little the witch has to say, challenges her to speak up, she is likewise turned into a dog. Then Prof. Gamigami gets changed into a cat for a critical comment about the shape of the witch’s hat and nose. Soon the conference has taken on the appearance of a zoo and is reduced to an atmosphere of nonsense.

One of the children asks why she saw his father bringing the presents one Christmas when she stayed up all night to watch. The witch brushes off the question by saying, “That was Santa pretending to be your father. ” More questions come from the children, such as “There is no father in my house, only mother, ” or “The wrapping paper was from the department store. ” Fathers and mothers who object to the witch’s inadequate answers to these apt questions by the children are turned into animals one after another and the conference deteriorates even further.

Once again the volume of the background Jingle Bells music grows and a spotlight focuses on the bed. The child (doubling as the mother) who had snuck out of the conference at some point and is now sleeping in the bed slowly awakes. She looks in the stocking with delight, gets off the bed, crawls under the conference table toward the back of the stage and disappears through the fireplace.

The subject of the 835th conference is “What About Houses with No Chimneys? ” Prof. Gamigami, as always the Santa Claus non-believer, launches into a discourse about how belief in the supremacy of Christmas presents and materialistic attitudes are destroying Japan. Following on this, a serious-minded teacher begins talking about the problem of starvation in Africa and others start in on problems like the failure of education and worldwide malnutrition. In the process, what is supposed to be a conference about the fantasy world of Santa Claus, becomes an uncomfortable forum on unpleasant realities that sends the participants fleeing for the door one after another.

And in this way the Santa Claus Conference will continue to be held next year and the year after that.