Minilla, March 27
Born 1964 in Akita Prefecture. In 1991 he joined the Hirosaki Theater company. Based on his experience as an actor, Hatasawa became active as a playwright and director from 2000. In 2005 his play Ore no Kabane wo Koeteike (Over My Dead Body) won the first prize in the short play contest of the Japan Playwrights Association Meeting 2005 in Kumamoto. That same year he moved his base to Aomori City and launched “Watanabe Genshiro Shoten” as a theater production group, which began activities as a theater company in 2008. In Aomori he has continued to nurture local thespians and build an art network with a nationwide vision. With his unique sense of humor and insights into human nature, Hatasawa creates play that appeal to audiences of all age groups. He also writes plays for other companies such as Gekidan Subaru, Seinen Gekijo and Mingei. He has also won the Grand Prize of the Japan Agency for Cultural Affairs Arts Festival for a radio drama. As an active high school teacher he has led his school’s drama club to the National High School Drama Contest numerous times. Two of his club’s plays have won the national championship, with Shugaku Ryoko (School Trip) in 2005 and Kappa (Water Sprite) in 2008. This work won the Grand Prize in the 44th Tohoku District High School Theater Contest, qualifying it for the national contest. It also toured the area struck by the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami to give free consolatory performances in cities including Kesennuma, Ofunato and Kamaishi. This tour will continue in 2012.
Watanabe Genshiro Shoten 9th production
Minilla, March 27
April 19 – 26, 2009Atelier Green Park (Aomori)
May 2 – 6, 2009 at The Suzunari (Tokyo)
©Shohei Yamashita
Data
:
Premiere: 2009
Length: approx. 1 hour, 30 min.
Acts, scenes: 1 act, one scene
Cast: 10 (6 men, 4 woman)
The setting is the principal’s office of Utou Middle School in Aomori Prefecture.
Minilla is talking with the principal just 30 minutes before the start of the ceremony to end the school year, which will include farewells to two teachers who are leaving the school, the homeroom teacher of the second year Class No. 3, Ms. Yoshiko Kobayashi, and the health room assistant teacher, Ms. Ohashi. There will also be a retirement ceremony for the principal.
Minilla is selfishly making a lot of brusque and irreverent complaints and demands, not only to the principal but also concerning all the teachers. Almost all of his statements are quarrelsome. He has been a student who is often absent, and when he does come to school he rarely goes to class but spends most of his time either in the principal’s office or the health room. It appears that Minilla is the main reason that the health room’s Ohashi, his homeroom teacher Kobayashi and the principal Sasahara are all quitting the school at once.
The troubles began when teacher Kobayashi saw Minilla smoking one day and reported the fact to his mother. However, instead of reproaching her child for smoking, she begins an all-out offensive against the teacher Kobayashi with all the fierceness of Godzilla. That is apparently the cause of the physical and emotional breakdown that led Kobayashi to stop coming to school. She is also absent from today’s farewell ceremony, represented instead by her uncle, Yoshihiro, and nephew, Morimichi, to speak on her behalf.
Finally the school year’s closing ceremony and farewells are over and the teachers are leaving with expectations for a restful, if short, spring vacation before the new school year starts. The previously aggressive and combative Minilla now appears listless and even depressed. Perhaps he realizes now that he had actually liked his teacher Kobayashi…. As he prepares to leave, the principal says a word to Minilla.
“Even after your mother is gone, you will have to find your way in life.”
Alone now in the principal’s office, Minilla lights a cigarette and begins to smoke.
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