KAKUSHINHAN Theatre Company (Japan)
Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
Matsuoka Kazuko
Romeo and Juliet, POPLAR Publishing Co., Ltd., translated by Nakayama Tomoko
Kimura Ryūnosuke
Taichi Naoki (TASKO Co., Ltd.)
Furuya Kazuomi
Stage Work URAK Co., Ltd.
Norimine Masahiro
Hiramoto Masahiro
Itō Takashi (ART CORE Co., Ltd.）
Shimanuki Satoshi
Fujita Yuka
Iwasaki Yūdai Mark
Mori Hiroyuki
Yanagimoto Rion
Ueda Ai
Kikuchi Hiroki
to be Co., Ltd.
× Explosion; to be education Co., Ltd.; Stage Work URAK Co., Ltd.; TASKO Co., Ltd.; Theater Company Q＋; KAKUSHINHAN Studio; Ishimoto Chiaki
Yanagimoto Rion (KAKUSHINHAN Studio), Nemoto Keiji (KAKUSHINHAN Studio), Oyama Daisuke, Shamisen: Tsuruzawa Kanya
72 minutes
About the performance
This is the first production of our new project “× Explosion” – a collaboration of theatre (a director) and cinema (a movie director). As an art film featuring theatre, this video will be streamed worldwide. Performed by three actors, the key essences of Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet are condensed into this 60-minute performance. The piece describes the encounter, separation and tragic death of star-crossed lovers with an exceedingly modern drive. This modern interpretation of Shakespeare’s play comprises Japanese traditional performing art and contemporary culture in Tokyo. The play is directed by Kimura Ryūnosuke who has been directing more than 20 Shakespeare’s works in Theatre Company KAKUSHINHAN.
Theatre Company KAKUSHINHAN
KAKUSHINHAN is a theatre company basen in Tokyo, Japan, that stages Shakespeare plays under the concept, “If Shakespeare were here today, how would he direct his play to achive optimal impact upon a modern audience?” The company was founded by director Kimura Ryūnosuke in 2012, who named the company KAKUSHINHAN, which translates as “convinced criminals.” Effectively using modern techonologies, stylish costumes mixing modern/traditional designs, and familiar universal products and cultures, KAKUSHINHAN builds up on stage an imaginary third world of Shakespeare Tokyo, which serves as bridge that connects today’s audience with the distant settings of the stories, and successfully taps into the imagination of the audience to deliver the universality and the scale of the Bard’s classic plays. The founder and director, Kimura Ryūnosuke, studied English Literature in the University of Tokyo, and his directional ideas are partly derived from various classic to modern literatures. The actors that come from Tokyo and all areas of Japan are trained by the director, Kimura, to match the style of each performance. KAKUSHINHAN’s performances include stron physical and vocal expressions, transgenderal castings, and multilingual (English) lines. In recent years, the company has been appreciated widely by various audiences from theatre fans to Shakespeare researches, and even first-time theatre goers, collecting much attention within theatres in Tokyo as “The company to lead Japan’s Shakespeare scenes after Ninagawa Yukiko (Matsuoka Kazuko, Japan’s primary Shakespeare translator).” Aiming to introduce this moders Japanese style Shakespeare throughout the globe, and even collaborating with local actors in the future, KAKUSHINHAN is determined to take a leap out of Japan and perform abroad.
Kimura Ryūnosuke
Kimura Ryūnosuke is a founder and sole director of KAKUSHINHAN. He studied English Literature in the University ofTokyo, especially focused on Shakespeare. After studying direction under the renowned Japanesetheatre director, the late Ninagawa Yukio, he founded Theatre Company KAKUSHINHAN in 2012.KAKUSHINHAN has consecutively performed Hamlet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, King Lear, Othello, Titus Andronicus, Julius Caesar, Richard III, Henry VI, Macbeth and other Shakespeare plays mainly in Tokyo, with Kimura directing every performance. Kimura updates Shakespeare as a contemporary entertainment by clashing these classic masterpieces with today’s society, thus shedding light onto the universality of these classic works from an entirely new angle.In recent years, under his concept of “Shakespeare Tokyo,” Kimura uses ready-made ubiquitous city products as props, sets innovative scenography created by collaborating with the actors’ creativeness, and boldly inserts domestic and international pop/rock music. Such modern-sensed diverse directions have collected much attention within Japan, and also foreign media, such as the JAPAN TIMES and British Arts Council.Kimura’s original script, Hamlet x SHIBUYA, has been translated into English and will be featured in the Arden Shakespeare published book Re-Imagining Shakespeare in Contemporary Japan (January 2021). The cover of the book bares a stage photo from Kimura’s direction of Hamlet. Also, Kimura has completed a poetical storybook of a Contemporary Myth, Kagunomiya (November 2020).
Zuni Icosahedron
Founded in 1982, Zuni Icosahedron is the epitome of experimental theater in Hong Kong. A Hong Kong based international experimental performing arts company, Zuni is a non-profit charitable cultural organization. Zuni is one of the nine major professional performing arts companies in Hong Kong directly supported by the government, and a venue partner of the Hong Kong Cultural Centre since 2009. As a premier experimental art company, Zuni has produced more than 200 original productions of theatre and multimedia performances, and been invited to more than 80 cities around the globe for cultural exchange and performances. With the support of its members, and under the leadership of the Co-Artistic Directors, Danny Yung and Mathias Woo, Zuni has been active in video, sound experimentation and installation arts, as well as in the area of arts education, arts criticism, cultural policy research and international conferences and cultural exchanges. Over the last two decades, Zuni has been undertaking the mission of developing and preserving Intangible Cultural Heritages (Performing Arts).
Danny Yung
An experimental art pioneer and one of Hong Kong’s most influential artists, Yung is a founding member and co-artistic director of Zuni Icosahedron. In the past 40 years, Yung has been working extensively in diverse fields of arts, including theatre, cartoon, film, video as well as visual and installation art. Yung has been involved in over 100 theatre productions as director, scriptwriter, producer and/or stage designer. His theatre works were staged in multiple cities across the world. In 2008, in response to a commission from the Hong Kong Arts Festival, he created Tears of the Barren Hill, a theatre work reflecting on the innovation of traditional Chinese theatre and the institution of cultural exchange, which earned him the Music Theatre NOW Award of the International Theatre Institute (ITI). In 2010, at the Shanghai Expo, Yung, in collaboration with the renowned Japanese theatre director Satō Makoto, showed The Tale of the Crested Ibis, a cultural exchange project which combined, for the first time, elements of noh and kunqu theatres as well as traditional arts and cutting-edge (robot) technology. The annual Toki Festival, curated by Yung since 2012, develops the concept of the Crested Ibis, or Toki, in an effort to enrich young kunqu performers’ experience and promote exchanges between contemporary and traditional performing arts in Asian regions. The artist keeps a close eye on the arts and cultural policy and on education development in Hong Kong and the Asia-Pacific region. He currently serves as chairman of the Hong Kong–Taipei–Shenzhen–Shanghai City-to-City Cultural Exchange Conference and a member of the Design Council of Hong Kong. He was also appointed the inaugural Dean’s Master Artist in Drama of the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts in 2013, and he on the Management Board of the HKICC Lee Shau Kee School of Creativity and the advisory boards of the Department of Cultural Studies of Hong Kong’s Lingnan University and the School of Drama of the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts. In 2009, Yung was awarded the Cross of Merit of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in recognition of his achievements and contributions to cultural exchanges between Germany and Hong Kong.
