Noriyuki Sawa

Noriyuki Sawa

Born in 1961 in Sapporo, Hokkaido. Noriyuki Sawa was part of the puppet theater Hitomiza and an art teacher before going to France in 1991 to study puppetry. In 1992 he enrolled at DAMU (Academy of Performing Arts) in Prague, Czech Republic, to study puppetry and now works as an instructor in the same school and as a puppet artist, director, and performer based in Prague and active mainly in Europe. In 2001 Sawa co-produced the international project MOR NA TY VASE RODY!!! A Plague O’Both Your Houses!!! – Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet with The Japan Foundation and the Czech puppet theater, Theatre DRAK. Among his representative works are his Macbeth solo silent drama using masks and puppets and King Lear using shadow play techniques. He has won the Franz Kafka Medal, the Prague Children’s Theater Festival Grand Prix, the prize for Best Performance for Children in the International Puppet Festival in Ostrava, Czech Republic.