Shinjuku Ryōzanpaku Theatre Company (Japan)
Kim Su-jin
Okawa Taeko
Nikodem Karolak
Tsuguo Izumi
Miyazaki Emiko, Takase Yūsuke
Ōtsuka Satoshi
Ōnuki Takashi
Min Youngchi
Ōnuki Takashi
Hiroshima Kō
Satō Masayuki
Ōsuga Hiroshi
Honma Misa
ism
Noguchi Kazumi
Kim Su-jin – Rokudo gun
Hiroshima Kō – Hitotsuha
Shimamoto Kazuto – Nicchoku, the Grim Reaper
Jan Yūichi – King Yebi
Satō Masayuki – Ma-bessi
Fujita Yoshiaki – Gecchoku, the Grim Reaper
Horiguchi Kaoru – Youngest Son
Ōta Akinori – Hikaru, body guard
Cho Bak – Katoku
Asō Mugi – Oldest Man
Yatsushiro Sadaharu – Caretaker
Yasukawa Junpei – Akaha, eldest son
Kobayashi Kazuki – Aoha, second son
Nakajima Mio – Nakaha, third son
Minase Akira – Hidariha, fourth son
Shibano Kōki – Migiha, fifth son
Be Mihyang – Old Woman
Ebine Hisayo – Princess Paridegi
Mizushima Kanna – Caretaker’s wife
Akamatsu Yumi – Queen Kirude
Shimizu Mihoko – Suemusum, youngest princess
Someya Chisato – Aomusume, first princess
Itō Sayaka – San musume, third princess
Kawanishi Mayu –Yon musume, fourth princess
Shimojō Mana – Aka musume, second princess
Moroji Ran – Go musume, fifth princess
Ōkawa Taeko – Gungnyeo’s soul
107 minutes
About the performance
A king who didn’t have a male successor to succeed his throne, abandons his youngest daughter in a river. Following a revelation he received from god, he goes on a journey to find a wife who would give birth to a baby boy. Meanwhile, the country which lost its king, finds itself in a state of confusion and falls apart. At the end of his journey, he meets a woman who turns out to be his own youngest daughter who he abandoned in the past. Realizing how foolish he was, he entrusts the future to her daughter and commits suicide. This piece was first performed in Tokyo in 2006. We have been invited to perform in various places such as Tokyo, Korea, Romania, and Brazil. One of the critics praised, “King Lear from the land of rising sun”. Based on the masterpiece, King Lear, we added some folktale aspects unique to Japan, Korea, and other parts of Eastern Asia, and some traditional music and dancing, to create our own original piece. Our purpose is to take the inspiration we got from Shakespeare and change it into a totally different Asian theatre piece. We would like the audience from all around the world to rediscover the timeless theme within the Shakespearean fountain, and understand the uniqueness and the richness of Asian drama.
Kim Sujin
Kim Sujin (1954) and his Shinjuku Ryōzanpaku Theatre Company attest to the variety of styles employed in recent works by resident Korean artists in Japanese literature and theatre. The appearance of his plays and films is connected to the changing identities of resident Koreans, especially since the 1980s. Kim makes use of political theatre performances of the earlier period to magnify and to remake into art the experiences of resident Koreans in Japan. As such, his works mobilize the legacy of his antecedents in Japanese theatre as well as the past experiences of resident Koreans. Instead of enacting an essential Korean ethnicity or culture onstage or through films, Kim inclines toward denoting migration, hybridity and being situated as betwixt and between. By doing so, his works depict the distinct niche occupied by resident Koreans in Japan, which distinguishes them from both the Koreans on the mainland and the Japanese.
Shinjuku Ryōzanpaku Theatre Company
Shinjuku Ryōzanpaku Theatre Company is a Tokyo-based ensemble renowned throughout Japan and internationally for its tent-theatre performances, large-scale, elaborate mis-en-scene, acute comedy and unique stylistic brush-strokes. The company was established in 1987 and is led by charismatic director and actor, Kim Sujin. By the reinterpretation of The Situation Theatre coined by the legendary Tokyo playwright Kara Jūrō, their adaptations of Kara's work have delighted audiences with its complex and surreal tragicomedy and farce. Kara's theatre draws on Kabuki - the garish cousin of classical Noh theatre; employing poor-theatre stage and costume transformation. His plots and manner of story-telling fall into the theatre of absurd genre – hair of a dead sister pulled from the brother's abdomen (Cry From the City of Virgins), lovers descending to Hades populated by Kamikaze pilots (Matasaburō of the Wind), or reincarnating prostitutes murdered for gold teeth by Japanese soldiers during the Manchuria invasion (John Silver: The Beggar of Love). Kara has blazed a trail through the political minefield of Japanese nationalist politics, producing a theatre at once subversive and celebrating the culture of Japan. Shinjuku Ryōzanpaku Theatre Company continues to perform Kara's plays – just recently the 70th production Bengal Tiger was premiered in their tent at Hanazono Shrine. In Kara's topsy-turvy travesty of Takeyama Michio’s novel, together with a whole platoon of Japanese soldiers, private Mizushima strums Home Sweet Home on the Burmese harp as they collect the remains of their fallen dead in wicker trunks. Shinjuku Ryōzanpaku Theatre Company also has a long history of producing politically delicate historical dramas. For instance, Toraji, based on Oh Tae-suk’s play about rebellion within Korea leads up to a Japanese invasion at the turn of the twentieth century. The Shinjuku Ryōzanpaku’s adaptation toured to Korea in 2011, at the Doosan Arts Centre, Seoul and Jeongju, and was seen as a step to mend the long troubled relation between Japan and Korea. It's an indication of the vital role that Kim Sujin plays in fostering good relations between the countries. He is zainichi,meaning Korean living in Japan. Thus, his mixed roots have provided a platform for theatre culture to flow between the two nations. Shinjuku Ryōzanpaku Theatre Company has received awards from the Japanese Agency of Culture, and toured USA (NY), Canada, Germany, France (Festival D’Avignon), China, Taiwan and Korea, Australia (Japan Australia Year of Exchange 2006) and Brazil (Cultural Exchange Festival). In 2002, it collaborated with companies in Korea to create the original performance The Space Between for the Japan/Korea World Cup Arts Festival. In 2007 they toured the original play King Yebi (a collaboration with Theatre 1980), to the Seoul Nazan Arts Centre and the Ishou International Theatre Festival. In 2010 they ventured into the liminal world of The Little Prince, an interpretation employing all of director Sujin Kim and his company member's considerable staging magic - the production is a collaboration with Theatre 1980, a Kichijōji Project.
