Ai Nagai
Ai Nagai
Born in Tokyo in 1951, Ai Nagai is a playwright and director. She graduated from the Toho Gakuen College of Drama and Music with a major in theater. In 1981, Nagai formed the two-person theater company Nito with Shizuka Oishi. In 1992, the company was reorganized and renamed Nitosha, to serve as a production company for plays written and directed by Nagai. In her well-conceived works with their underlying social criticism, Nagai has continued to take up familiar, close-at hand subjects such as language, customs, gender, family and towns or problems deeply rooted in the subconscious to create plays that connect directly to real life with real-time immediacy. Nagai won the 1st Tsuruya Namboku Award for Ra-niku no Satsui in 1997 and the 44th Kishida Kunio Drama Award for Ani Kaeru in 1999. In 2000, she won the Drama Scenario Award of the 52nd Yomiuri Literary Awards for Hagi-ke no Sanshimai (The Three Hagi Sisters). Since 2002, Nagai has served two terms as President of the Japan Playwrights Association. Nagai has also drawn attention abroad as one of Japan’s leading contemporary playwrights with drama readings of her works including Toki no Monooki (Time’s Storeroom) at the Bush Theatre in the UK and The Three Hagi Sisters at New York’s Japan Society. In 2007, there was also a drama reading of her play Katazuketai Onnatachi in the Japan-USA Playwright, Play Exchange Project organized by the Minneapolis (USA) Playwrights Center and other organizations, and in South Korea a reading of her play Konnichiwa Kasan .
