Venue: National Centre for the Performing Arts - Theatre

Dates: June 27-29, 2017

Synopsis

This drama is adapted from an ancient Greek tragedy The Bacchae authored by the Athenian playwright Euripides. Dionysus (God of Wine) intends to punish Pentheus (King of Thebes). So he allures souls of the women in Thebes one by one (including Pentheus’ mother Agave), and then arrives at Mount Cithaeron. Pentheus is also fascinated and directed to the women's carnival banquet on Mount Cithaeron. However, he is torn to pieces by the admirers. Delirious, Agave carries Pentheus’ head and leaves. She wakes up only to find that her son is dead. At this time, she is aware that she has become a scapegoat...

Creative: Tadashi Suzuki

Tadashi Suzuki is the founder and director of the Suzuki Company of Toga (SCOT) based in Toga village, located in the mountains of Toyama prefecture. He is the organizer of Japan’s first International Theatre Festival (Toga Festival), and the creator of the Suzuki Method of Actor Training. Suzuki also plays an important role with several other organizations. He is the General Artistic Director of Shizuoka Performing Arts Center (1995-2007), a member of the International Theatre Olympics Committee, a founding member of the BeSeTo Festival (jointly organized by XU Xiaozhong from China and Kim Eui Kyung from Korea), the Chairman of the Board of Directors for the Japan Performing Arts Foundation, a nation-wide network of theatre professionals in Japan (2000-2010).

Suzuki’s work includes On the Dramatic Passions, The Trojan Women, Dionysus, King Lear, Cyrano de Bergerac, Madame de Sade and many others. Besides productions with his own company, he has directed several international collaborations, such as The Tale of Lear, co-produced and presented by four leading regional theatres in the U.S.; King Lear presented with the Moscow Art Theatre; Oedipus, co-produced by Cultural Olympiad and Düsseldorf Schauspiel Haus; and ELECTRA, produced by the Taganka Theatre, Moscow.

Suzuki has articulated his theories in a number of books. A collection of his writings in English, The Way of Acting is published by Theatre Communications Group (U.S.). He has taught his system of actor training in schools and theatres throughout the world, including The Julliard School in New York and the Moscow Art Theatre. The Cambridge University Press published The Theatre of Suzuki Tadashi as part of their Directors in Perspective series, based upon leading theatre directors of the 20th Century. This series includes works on, among others, Meyerhold, Brecht, Peter Brook, Ariane Mnouchkine, and Robert Wilson.

Suzuki is also a seminal thinker and practitioner. Suzuki’s primary concerns include: the structure of a theatre group, the creation and use of theatrical space, and the overcoming of cultural and national barriers in the interest of creating work that is truly universal.

Suzuki’s activities, both as a director creating multilingual and multicultural productions, as well as a festival producer bringing people from throughout the world together in the context of shared theatrical endeavours, reflect an aggressive approach to dealing with the fundamental issues of our times.

Presenter: SCOT

In 1976, Tadashi Suzuki relocated his theatre troupe - the Waseda Shogekijo - from its home in central Tokyo to Toga, a remote village in the mountains of western Japan. Working from a thatched-roof house, built in the traditional “praying hands” or gassho-zukuri style, which the group had converted into a theatre, they renamed themselves the Suzuki Company of Toga (SCOT).

Since then the site has grown into a complex of lodgings, rehearsal rooms, and assorted performing spaces, including an indoor playhouse, a second gassho-zukuri theatre, a black box theatre, an outdoor “rock” theatre, and a spectacular lakeside amphitheatre. It is in these facilities and theatres that the company is run, following the precepts of Tadashi Suzuki and under his direction.

Following Suzuki’s notions of the universality of theatre, this special location played host for many years (1982-1999) to the concentrated workshops in the Suzuki Method of Actor Training created by Suzuki and being learnt by performing artists throughout the world, and invited theatre companies from around the world not only to give performances but to live, work, and collaborate with each other. And while acknowledging each other’s cultural similarities and differences, the stimulus provided by such encounters spawned entirely new notions of theatre and undoubtedly many new forms of culture.

Toga village has also served as springboard for the international activities of SCOT. Many of the theatrical productions developed and performed in Toga have gone on to tour the globe. Since their first overseas performance at the Théâtre des Nations Festival in Paris in 1972, the company has performed in 84 cities in 31 countries. In addition to offering a summer and winter festival, featuring performances by SCOT, Toga continues to serve as a center for international research activities and for the training of practitioners in the performing arts, as well as an archive of documents and materials pertaining to the performing arts.Source: National Centre for the Performing Arts