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  • Tokyo Notes
  • The Yalta Conference
  • Citizens of Seoul

Dramas by Oriza Hirata

  • Par-dessus bord -Tori no tobu takasa

    鳥の飛ぶ高さ / Tori no tubu takasa

    year created:
    2009
    length:
    2hour 15min.
    number of characters:
    17 ( male: 10 / female: 7 )

    "Par-dessus bord-Tori no tobu takasa" is a joint Japanese/French project written by Oriza Hirata which is an adaptation of the play "Par-dessus bord" by Michel Vinaver, a leading playwright in France.
    Hirata turned Vinaver's portrait of two competing toilet roll companies into a story about a Japanese lavatory basin manufacturing company with world famous technology.
    The story is set in a medium-sized lavatory manufacturing company in Japan. The Japanese company is coming under increasing pressure from a French conglomerate (which is the world's biggest toilet manufacturer) aiming to buy it out and add it as a subsidiary of their company together with the Japanese company's high-tech warm water wiping technology patents. The president and executives, who are also family members to one another, turn against each other. Struggling to find a way for the company to survive, executives deepen the confrontation. Meanwhile mid-level employees take active roles 'behind the scenes'. Cultural conflict among people involved slowly begins to affect the company members' family interests.

    ★ Translated Scripts (French)

  • The Tongue-Cut Sparrow

    舌切り雀 / Shitakiri Suzume

    year created:
    2009
    length:
    20min.
    number of characters:1
    ( male: 1 / female: 0 )

    This 20-minute, one-person play was written for Kenji Yamauchi, a Seinendan actor, to be presented in various primary schools in France.
    Based on a Japanese fable "The Tongue-Cut Sparrow", the play develops as the performer interacts with the young audience.
    In the fable, an ill-natured old woman cuts off a sparrow's tongue. Her worried husband visits the sparrows' inn to search for the sparrow. He comes back with generous souvenirs from the inn, the greedy wife also runs to the inn, only to be heavily punished for choosing the larger of two gift boxes.

    ★ Translated Scripts (French)

  • Christmas in Tehran

    クリスマス イン テヘラン / Kurisumasu in Teheran

    year created:
    2009
    length:
    55min.
    number of characters:9
    ( male: 4 / female: 5 )

    This short piece was written as a part of "Utopia?", a Japanese/Iranian/French co-production produced by the Centre Dramatique National de Besancon.
    The play is set in a hotel at a ski resort in the suburbs of Tehran. Built by an American enterprise before the Islamic Revolution of 1979, the hotel is still in business but declining in popularity. A Japanese corporation, with a view to renovating it, has sent a financier and a hotel business expert from Japan and an experienced hotel manager, who is an expert in turning around failing hotels, from France.
    Christmas Eve descends upon all those accommodated in the hotel, regardless of their cultural backgrounds. The hotel manager is being visited by two guests, his wife and her sister with whom he is having an affair. A financier and his wife who have lost their child, the Iranian owner who will have the final say in the renovation plan of the hotel, accompanied by his wife, and a loyal Iranian employee who has stuck by the hotel are also staying at the hotel.
    This play portrays various people who spend Christmas Eve in Tehran, which is a home town for some and a remote place for others. The relationships and religious viewpoints come across on stage and their differences are brought to the fore.

    ★ Translated Scripts (French)

  • I, Worker

    働く私 / Hataraku Watashi

    year created:
    2008
    length:
    20min.
    number of characters:
    4 ( male: 1 / female: 1 / robot:2 )

    This is the first full-scale robot-human theater production, which features two robots co-developed by Hirata and the Intelligent Robotics Laboratory at Osaka University, which is the world's leading authority on robotics research.
    Set in the near future when it has become natural for robots and humans to co-exist, "I, Worker" depicts a young couple, the Mayamas, who live with two robots named Takeo and Momoko. While Momoko plays an essential role in the family through her work, Takeo suffers mental illness and loses his motivation to work.
    This play casts a question of what work means to us as humans, by portraying a robot that cannot work, although by definition, robots were made to work. This piece is only 20 minutes long, but its premiere was met with great excitement and powerful emotion by the audience.

  • A Long Night in the Tropics

    眠れない夜なんてない / Nemurenai Yorunante nai

    year created:
    2008
    length:
    1hour 55min.
    number of characters:
    15 ( male: 6 / female: 9 )

    Set in the lounge of a fictional Malaysian resort for Japanese retirees, mainly middle-aged and elderly couples, this piece is a steadfast depiction of the papier-mache lives of the people who come and go. Two daughters are visiting their parents for the first time in two years. A husband and wife looking for a peaceful place to retire come to see the wife's high school friend who lives in the resort. Various other people including an oddly upbeat visiting couple and a lonesome elderly resident accompanied by his daughter also gather and share a quiet time together.
    In the midst of the tropical jungle, these Japanese are like butterflies in a sanctuary, merely awaiting their deaths. They have a very long past to remember and a limited future to dream about.

    ★ Translated Scripts (Korean)

  • A Cold Wind Blows through Cherry Blossoms

    風のつめたき櫻かな / Kaze no Tsumetaki Sakura kana

    year created:
    2008
    length:
    2hour.
    number of characters:
    17 ( male: 11 / female: 6 )

    Tokyo in the near future. A catastrophic earthquake has hit the capital, but <The Rhine>, a cafe situated on a local high street, has escaped complete distraction and has already reopened.
    The play is set here, where survivors dwell as a place for rest and relaxation.
    Some are leaving Tokyo, some are staying, and some have come back, concerned about the safety of their family. Whilst unfolding various human relationships, the play illustrates the hopes and despairs of the people in the devastated neighborhood.

  • In the Heart of a Forest

    森の奥 / Mori no Oku

    year created:
    2008
    length:
    1hour 40min.
    number of characters:
    6 ( male: 5 / female: 1 )

    Hirata was commissioned to write this piece by Le Theatre Royal Flamand (KVS), the largest theatre in the Flemish region of Belgium. From the start this was meant as a multi-lingual piece, to be performed by both Flemish and French speaking actors. While dealing with primatology, this play offers a glimpse of the ethnic conflict in Belgium through conversations about the border between humans and primates.
    ÊThe play is set in a research institute of bonobos, located deep in the postcolonial Congolese jungle. A secret project to artificially evolve bonobos into humans is underway. Furthermore, there is another plan to develop the area into a primotological leisure center, in order to finance the secret project.
    ÊA psychologist, a newcomer to the project, proposes to make and study artificially autistified bonobos, with a hope to apply the result to the treatment of his own son's autism. In the midst of conflicting interests of researchers from different fields of study, we see through this play a glimpse of a larger issue of "What makes a human".

    ★ Translated Scripts (French)

  • Citizens of Seoul 1929 : Graffiti

    ソウル市民 昭和望郷編 / Seoul Shimin Showa Bokyo Hen

    year created:
    2007
    length:
    1hour 40min.
    number of characters:
    25 ( male: 10 / female: 15 )

    As the last part of the "Citizens of Seoul" trilogy, of which story is spun around the Shinozaki family which runs a stationery business in Korea, this piece depicts a quiet autumn afternoon in 1929 in Seoul, which was under colonized rule by Japan.
    In America it was close to the end of the Roaring Twenties, and the Great Depression was creeping up from behind, while Japan was soon to see the military stampede and the rise of fascism. Portrayed in this play is a group of young Koreans and Japanese, who seem to enjoy the one last fleeting feast.

    ★ Translated Scripts (French, English, Korean)

  • Songs of Farewell

    別れの唄 / Wakare no Uta

    year created:
    2007
    length:
    1hour 30min.
    number of characters:
    8 ( male: 5 / female: 3 )

    This is the first play that Oriza Hirata has written as a commission from a theater outside Japan. This multilingual piece, performed by French and Japanese actors, is primarily written for a French audience. The structure of this play is made in such a manner that the French audience can clearly understand what is happening on the stage without subtitles for the lines spoken in Japanese.
    In this play, the audience follows one and half hours during the wake of Marie. She left France to be married to Takeo in Japan, had a daughter and died an untimely death. Marie's family - her parents and brother - fly into Japan, and try to accept the death of their beloved, while they are perplexed by the Japanese way of carrying out her funeral.
    "Songs of Farewell" portrays the funeral, where various aspects of intercultural friction are condensed, and show how Marie's family - both French and Japanese - share the same grief, but must struggle to reconcile the different ways in which they each manifest this emotion.

    ★ Translated Scripts (French)

  • Sand and Soldiers

    砂と兵隊 / Sunato Heitai

    year created:
    2005
    length:
    1hour 45min.
    number of characters:
    14 ( male: 6 / female: 8 )

    An absurd drama depicting soldiers endlessly marching in the desert. Depicting the troop whose sole mission is to move onward and the civilians they come across - a family, a couple on honeymoon, etc. - this piece clearly reveals the absurdity of human existence on the battlefield.

    ★ Translated Scripts (French)

  • Conference before the Throne

    御前会議 / Gozen Kaigi

    year created:
    2005
    length:
    1hour 20min.
    number of characters:
    7 ( male: 3 / female: 4 )

    A conference-style play of seven people and one speechless doll representing the Emperor. They discuss every topic under the sun, from where to build a new bicycle parking lot to what to do about the coming alien attack. A novel work portraying the Japanese in conference who never get to conclusions.

  • No More Winds Blow

    もう風も吹かない / Mou Kazemo Fukanai

    year created:
    2003
    length:
    2hour.
    number of characters:
    26 ( male: 11 / female: 15 )

    The time is some twenty years from now when Japan is still in the long depression that started 30 years previously. The place is the fictional facility the for training of Japan Overseas Cooperation Volunteer Corps (the Japanese equivalent of the Peace Corps) candidates. This piece depicts the young, unstable candidates, each with his/her own dreams, to be sent soon to their assigned countries.
    The news arrives that volunteers to developing countries for technical help will no longer be sent from the following year. They are to be the last. They worry about the future of the organization. One of them leaves when he can no longer believe in his dreams. The worry and loneliness drive some of them into love affairs and drinking, both of which are forbidden on the facility site. This piece poses the question, through the earnest dialogue of the candidate, "What is the essence of helping and being helped?"
    Can we really help others?
    Can we really be helped by someone?
    Hirata wrote this piece for his students at Obirin University where he taught from 2000 to 2006.

  • The Journal of POWs

    南島俘虜記 / Nantou Furyoki

    year created:
    2003
    length:
    1hour 20min.
    number of characters:
    10 ( male: 5 / female: 5 )

    Wartime in the fictional near future. Japanese soldiers are imprisoned on a southern island. The time and the enemy are not specified in the script. The war seems to last forever, and the POWs have no hope to go back to Japan. If they did, there wouldn't be happiness waiting in their now deserted homeland.
    The carefree life on the southern island, on the other hand, rolls on slowly and idly. Depicted here is the hideous tedium of the POWs who have nothing to do and cannot find purpose in their lives any more.
    Inspired by "TAKEN CAPTIVE: A Japanese POW's Story" by Shohei Ooka, Hirata has created another of his bitter and humorous dead-end situation pieces, similar in spirit to "From S Plateau" and "Kings of the Road."

    ★ Translated Scripts (German)

  • The Yalta Conference

    ヤルタ会談 / Yalta Kaidan

    year created:
    2002
    length:
    30min.
    number of characters:
    3 ( male: 3 / female: 0 )

    Hirata first wrote this piece as a rakugo, a traditional Japanese stand-up comedy, and then revised it as a three-person theater piece. Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin gather at Yalta to discuss the postwar world, each with his own thoughts and plots in his mind. The world's postwar history of the past 50 years is fully and skillfully depicted in this 30-minute play.

    ★ Translated Scripts (English, French)

  • Across the River in May

    その河をこえて、五月 / Sono Kawao Koete,Gogatsu

    year created:
    2002
    length:
    2hour 30min.
    number of characters:
    11 ( male: 6 / female: 5 )

    This piece was written by Oriza Hirata and KIM Myung-Hwa, an aspiring Korean writer, to be presented as one of the events related to 2002 FIFA World Cup Korea/Japan. The production, an exceptionally intensive International collaboration, was a big success both in Japan and Korea.
    The time is spring, 2002. The place is the bank of the Han River where the people in Seoul like to gather. The Japanese students of a Korean language school, their Korean teacher and his family get together for cherry blossom viewing. In this epical piece, through their subtle exchanges, we see the past, present and future of the troubles and mutual understanding of the two countries.
    We see the people desperately trying to communicate when language fails. We see the historical relationship of the two countries, family ties, the issue of Korean nationals born and raised in Japan Japanese Koreans and international marriages. We see the communication and empathy in spite of differences in conventions, ethnicities and the expectations of the native countries.
    By capturing a moment on the river and delineating conversations laden with encounter and parting, the fragments of the present Japanese-Korean situation are quietly revealed.
    This piece became the first production in the history of Japanese-Korean cultural exchange to win theatrical awards both in Japan and in Korea.

  • Attacking the Ueno Zoo for the Fourth Time

    上野動物園再々々襲撃 / Ueno Dobutsuen sai-sai-sai Shugeki

    year created:
    2001
    length:
    1hour 40min.
    number of characters:
    18 ( male: 7 / female: 11 )

    After attending the funeral of a friend, grade school alumni gather in a downtown coffee shop and work out a plan to steal a camel from the Ueno Zoo. They want to have a former classmate, the girl all the boys admired, ride on its back.
    Their deep sorrow and small hopes are comically depicted, as these middle-aged men, once mischievous kids, work on their plan, revealing their real lives and boyhood memories.
    Oriza Hirata wrote this piece based on work the late Tadao Kanasugi, playwright and director, had been preparing when he died. Hirata also added and mixed scenes from other works by Kanasugi, including one of his masterpieces, "Attacking the Ueno Zoo for the Second Time."

  • Suddenly Married

    隣にいても一人 / Tonari ni Itemo Hitori

    year created:
    2000
    length:
    1hour
    number of characters:
    ４ ( male: 2 / female: 2 )

    Shohei and Sumie wake up one morning to find that they have become a married couple.
    Shohei's brother and Sumie's sister, after twenty some years of marriage, have started living separately, facing a divorce. They suspect that their siblings are making up this "suddenly married" situation to somehow convince them to start again as a couple.
    In spite of that, the odd life of this new couple begins.

    ★ Translated Scripts (English)

  • Citizens of Seoul 1919

    ソウル市民1919 / Seoul Shimin 1919

    year created:
    2000
    length:
    1hour 40min.
    number of characters:
    21 ( male: 9 / female: 12 )

    This sequel to "Citizens of Seoul," one of the most renowned pieces by Oriza Hirata, portrays a peaceful morning of the Shinozakis in Seoul ten years later on March 1, 1919, the very day the Samil (March First) Independence Movement, the biggest of such movements during the Japanese rule, broke out.
    These Japanese, the rulers of the colony, are not unaware of the alarming air outside but they just cannot simply understand why the Korean people should want to resist. Their "comic solitude" is depicted even more vividly than in "Citizens of Seoul."

    ★ Translated Scripts (Korean, French, English)

  • People of the Far Away Days

    遠い日々の人 / Tooi Hibi no Hito

    year created:
    1999
    length:
    1hour 30min.
    number of characters:
    10 ( male: 4 / female: 6 )

    Oriza Hirata wrote this turn-of-the-20th-century Japanese version of "The Cherry Orchard" for Kyoko Kishida, a distinguished actress noted for her theater and film career, including the movie "Woman in the Dunes (Suna no Onna)."
    A rash of bizarre crimes in the neighborhood, along with the prolonged economic depression, have been getting on the nerves of the inhabitants of a Tokyo neighborhood.
    A young woman comes back from Berlin, where she has been living, to her declining, once-wealthy family. The estate has already been put on sale but the mistress, her mother, has not told anyone about it yet.
    This piece, comically depicting the state of mind of the Japanese after the bubble economy burst, won Kyoko Kishida a numerous awards.

  • The Night Longer than the Sea

    海よりも長い夜 / Umi yorimo Nagai Yoru

    year created:
    1999
    length:
    1hour 50min.
    number of characters:
    18 ( male: 9 / female: 9 )

    This piece deals with the issue of the relationship between groups and individuals.
    What started as a movement against the closure of an old dormitory at a women's college in a Tokyo suburb goes through major changes. As the nature conservationists and other citizen's movements people join in, the original group members become less and less united.
    This piece scrupulously delineates the course of the collapse of a citizen's movement group, coolly depicting the insanity hidden in group dynamics.
    The title is Hirata's homage to "Life and Death in Shanghai," an excellent work depicting the tragedy during Communist China's Cultural Revolution, whose Japanese title is "Shanghai no Nagai Yoru (The Long Night in Shanghai)."

  • The Treasury of Loyal Retainers

    忠臣蔵 / Chusingura

    year created:
    1999
    length:
    50min.
    number of characters:
    7 ( male: 7 / female: 0 )

    "Chushingura (The Treasury of Loyal Retainers)" is the most famous Kabuki piece in the history of Japanese performing arts. In this, Hirata's version, the samurai hold a heated discussion on their future lives, after their lord has committed a major crime which will cause their clan to be demolished.
    Hirata wrote this piece by the request from Tadashi Suzuki, artistic director of the Theater Olympics in Shizuoka in 1999. It was presented in their open-air theater as the only piece newly written for the festival.

    ★ Translated Scripts (English)

  • A Couple's Story

    夫婦善哉 / Meoto Zenzai

    year created:
    1999
    length:
    1hour 30min.
    number of characters:
    5 ( male: 3 / female: 2 )

    A man's daughter dies and his long separated wife comes back for the funeral. The man, his wife, and her sister who was taking care of the child after she had left meet, forming a triangle.
    This indecisive man, though confronted by his own daughter's funeral, just keeps cooking and serving dishes to the sisters who are strangely attracted to this pitiable middle-aged man.
    Oriza Hirata got the motif and the title of this piece from "Meotozenzai," a novel by Sakunosuke Oda.

    ★ Translated Scripts (Italian)

  • Komachi's Tale - New Version

    新版・小町風伝 / Shin-pan Komachifuden

    year created:
    1998
    length:
    1hour 45min.
    number of characters:
    24 ( male: 10 / female: 14 )

    Based on "Komachifuden," a masterpiece by playwright Shogo Ohta, this panoramic piece presented on a 4-platform stage depicts the pathos of several Komachis waiting for their lovers and the lovers visiting Komachis nightly.
    The classical Japanese legend of Komachi tells that if a man courts her for a hundred consecutive nights Komachi will be in love with him. This modern version, set in a ruined apartment house whose walls and boundaries have fallen down, renders the anxiety and weariness of waiting women and courting men.

  • Revolutionists

    革命日記 / Kakumei Nikki

    year created:
    1997
    length:
    1hour 10min.
    number of characters:
    14 ( male: 8 / female: 6 )

    This piece depicts political "radicals," who are considered out-of-date in contemporary Japan. Though their desultory discussions revolve around plans of reckless terrorism, they feel that their group is falling part.

  • Cause the Moon is So Bright Tonight

    月がとっても蒼いから / Tsuki ga Tottemo Aoikara

    year created:
    1997
    length:
    1hour 30min.
    number of characters:
    11 ( male: 5 / female: 6 )

    Hirata wrote this piece to be presented by Bungakuza, one of the oldest theater groups in Japan.
    An old man in a venerable family dies in the Tokyo suburbs. After the wake his family are in the living room, talking nonchalantly about the cost of the funeral service and what not. A couple of mourners arrive late and reveal that the deceased had been actively involved in the study of UFO, which he had kept secret from his family. And now the commotion begins.
    The sadness of a generation of Japanese people baffled by rapid post-war growth is depicted in this situation-comedy type setting, a style which is not very common for Oriza Hirata.

  • The Little Match Girls

    マッチ売りの少女たち / Match Uri no Shojotachi

    year created:
    1997
    length:
    1hour 40min.
    number of characters:
    10 ( male: 4 / female: 6 )

    Based on the early works of Minoru Betsuyaku, one of the most renowned Japanese playwrights of absurd drama, this absurd comedy depicts the little match girls who come to visit a middle-aged couple, one by one, claiming "I am your daughter," and do not go back. Housewives in the neighborhood and weird municipal officers also get involved as the story rolls on.

  • The Balkan Zoo

    バルカン動物園 / Balkan Dobutsuen

    year created:
    1997
    length:
    1hour 40min.
    number of characters:
    21 ( male: 7 / female: 14 )

    This piece, the third of the Science Series, is set in a science lab in 2010. The big issue here is whether or not to allow the brain of an Islamic scientist who has become a vegetable, injured in a major war in Europe, to be brought into their lab.
    Massive scientific discussions and the everyday lives of the young scientists are keenly balanced in this piece that asks the questions: what is humanity and what is it that distinguishes oneself from others?

    ★ Translated Scripts (Korean)

  • The Dancer

    踊り子 / Odoriko

    year created:
    1996
    length:
    1hour 40min.
    number of characters:
    21 ( male: 11 / female: 10 )

    Set in a small hotel in an Izu resort, this piece depicts both the fragile love between the hotel owner and a part-time worker and the subtle interactions among a group of people facing old age.

  • Kings of the Road

    冒険王 / Bouken Ou

    year created:
    1996
    length:
    1hour 30min.
    number of characters:
    18 ( male: 12 / female: 6 )

    This piece is set in the dormitory of a cheap hotel in Istanbul in 1980, where a group of Japanese backpackers hang out, detained there by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the seizure by students of the American Embassy in Teheran.
    The ordinary and extraordinary lives of these young backpackers, after weeks and months of roaming, have grown indifferent and numb.
    This is an autobiographical piece of Oriza Hirata based on his experiences travelling around the world when he was 16.

    ★ Translated Scripts (French)

  • A Hard Life to Accept

    この生は受け入れがたし / Kono Sei wa Ukeiregatashi

    year created:
    1996
    length:
    1hour
    number of characters:
    5 ( male: 3 / female: 2 )

    A spin-off of the Science Series portraying a scientist and his wife who have recently moved from Tokyo to a suburban community in northeastern Japan. She cannot get used to the life there, nor can she help feeling uncomfortable with parasitology, her husband's specialty.
    By depicting the slightly odd but loving scientists devoted to parasitology, this piece examines what it is to be married.

    ★ Translated Scripts (French)

  • A Burning House,or Shambles?

    火宅か修羅か / Kataku ka Shura ka

    year created:
    1995
    length:
    1hour 30min.
    number of characters:
    20 ( male: 8 / female: 12 )

    A middle-aged novelist has long been staying at this inn. His three daughters, living away from him at home, come and visit their father after finding out that he is getting remarried. The subtle wavers in their minds caused by this plan are minutely delineated in this piece.
    This is Hirata's version of "Grand Hotel" depicting several groups of guests at an old Japanese inn one day.

  • Transfer Student

    転校生 / Tenkosei

    year created:
    1994
    length:
    1hour
    number of characters:
    21 ( male: 0 / female: 21 )

    A young woman wakes one morning to find she has been transferred to a new school. She is eventually accepted by her new classmates.
    This absurd drama for high school girls, based on Kafka's "Die Verwandlung (The Metamorphosis)," was created to be presented by the 21 girls chosen through auditions in the fall of 1994.

  • Tokyo Notes

    東京ノート / Tokyo Note

    year created:
    1994
    length:
    1hour 30min.
    number of characters:
    20 ( male: 9 / female: 11 )

    An assortment of people visit this small art museum in Tokyo in 2004 to see the paintings evacuated from war-torn Europe. Focusing on their various concerns (family, job, war, art, etc.) this play constructs a whole world of its own, just like a picture made from mosaic tiles. This piece, whose title pays homage to a masterpiece by filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu, "Tokyo Story (Tokyo Monogatari)," is one of the most renowned works of Oriza Hirata and has been presented not only in Japan but also in Europe, North America, and Korea. In 1995 Hirata won the Kishida Kunio Drama Award with this piece.

    ★ Translated Scripts (Korean, French, English {American English / British English},
    Itarian, German, Chinese, Thai, Malay, Indonesian, Flemish, Rumanian)

    ★ DVD with Subtitles

  • Some Forgotten Dream

    思い出せない夢のいくつか / Omoidasenai Yume no Ikutsuka

    year created:
    1994
    length:
    1hour
    number of characters:
    3 ( male: 1 / female: 2 )

    Through their conversations on a train, a singer past her prime, her young attendant, and the singer's agent hint at a subtle and touching love triangle in this piece. Under the starry sky, the train somehow seems to be headed for somewhere out of this world. They know each other's painful past but make no mention of it. They just go on talking nonchalantly.

    ★ Translated Scripts (French)

  • Northernmost Monkeys

    北限の猿 / Hokugen no Saru

    year created:
    1992
    length:
    1hour 25min.
    number of characters:
    15 ( male: 6 / female: 9 )

    This sequel to "The Scientifically Minded" in the Science Series depicts the members of the same biology lab 10 years later. Their project to evolve apes into humans has shown much progress, but the scientists themselves are still the same, troubled by trifling private problems of everyday life.
    This is a play that incorporates many of the findings of Japan's much-vaunted primate research, casting the question: "What is human?"

    ★ Translated Scripts (Korean)

  • Run in Your Sleep

    走りながら眠れ / Hashirinagara Nenure

    year created:
    1992
    length:
    1hour
    number of characters:
    2 ( male: 1 / female: 1 )

    This piece portrays anarchists Sakae Osugi and Noe Ito, his wife, depicting several moments in the six-month period immediately before they get mercilessly killed by the authorities right after the Great Kanto Earthquake in 1923.
    Osugi returns from Europe and quietly whiles away the time with his wife. They vaguely anticipate their own catastrophe and death but devote themselves to the translation of Fabre's "Souvenirs entomologiques."

  • Isn't Life More than Goodbyes?

    さよならだけが人生か / Sayonara dakega Jinsei ka

    year created:
    1992
    length:
    1hour 30min.
    number of characters:
    18 ( male: 8 / female: 10 )

    This piece takes place in a workers' anteroom by a construction site. The rainy weather has long hindered their work, and what's more, ancient ruins have been found at the site and now they have no idea when they'll be able to resume work. Depicting the tedious everyday life of the construction workers and the various "goodbye" scenes in life, this is the most rambling absurd drama in the world.

    ★ Translated Scripts (French)

  • My Days of Mah-jong

    麻雀放浪記 / Mah-jong Horoki

    year created:
    1992
    length:
    1hour 20min.
    number of characters:
    7 ( male: 5 / female: 2 )

    The men depicted in this quick-paced piece are so absorbed in gambling that they don't think it's crazy to stake their houses and wives. Most conversations in this play take place around the mah-jong table.
    A bunco artist installs an electronic device to a computer-operated automatic mah-jong table to cheat. This ultimate device is so cleverly-programmed that it's impossible to tell if it's working or if you are winning on your own.

  • From S Plateau

    Ｓ高原から / S Kogen Kara

    year created:
    1991
    length:
    1hour 30min.
    number of characters:
    17 ( male: 8 / female: 9 )

    The boring everyday life of some long-term patients in a sanatorium on a plateau is portrayed. These patients are being treated for an incurable disease whose name is not even known, but they are curiously light-hearted, enjoying their lives. Their friends and families come and visit them from "down below." Everyone eventually realizes that the gap between the life up here and that down there in the real world has become impassably big.
    With Thomas Mann's "The Magic Mountain" as the motif, this one-and-half-hour play renders the essence of the endless tedium in a sanatorium in the mountains.

    ★ Translated Scripts (French, Korean,English,Italian,German)

    ★ DVD with English Subtitles

  • Travel on Train

    阿房列車 / Aho Ressha

    year created:
    1991
    length:
    1hour
    number of characters:
    3 ( male: 1 / female: 2 )

    Based on Hyakken Uchida's noted essay "Ahoressha," this piece portrays an old couple on a journey and a young girl who happens to accompany them on the train. The conversation of this odd party goes on and on.
    The humorous conversation of the three, who seem to have no particular destinations, somewhat reminds one of "Waiting for Godot" or a high-quality road movie.

    ★ Translated Scripts (English)

  • Confession of a Feeble Mind

    暗愚小傳 / Angu Shoden

    year created:
    1991
    length:
    1hour 30min.
    number of characters:
    12 ( male: 6 / female: 6 )

    The lives of Kotaro Takamura, a renowned modern Japanese poet, and his wife Chieko are related in this piece. Through Kotaro's wavering between the modern West and traditional Japan, it sharply points out issues such as the contradictions in the modernization of Japan and the pro-war commitments of literary persons.
    Chieko becomes mentally ill and eventually dies. Kotaro, missing his beloved wife, devotes himself to ultranationalism. By depicting Kotaro, Chieko, and the common people around them, this piece delineates clearly the history of the modernization of Japan. A totally new type of historical drama.

  • Southward

    南へ / Minami e

    year created:
    1990
    length:
    1hour 30min.
    number of characters:
    19 ( male: 7 / female: 12 )

    The playwright got the idea of this play from Federico Fellini's film "E la nave va (And the Ship Sails On)." The time is mid-21st century. Corrupt, wealthy Japanese are running away in a luxurious passenger boat from Japan, now overcrowded with immigrants, to a southern island.
    This piece leisurely depicts these Japanese who belong to nowhere, spending time wearily and decadently on the deck. Discovery of a stowaway from the bottom of the ship creates a little stir in the boring life on board.

  • The Scientifically Minded

    カガクするココロ / Kagakusuru Kokoro

    year created:
    1990
    length:
    1hour 25min.
    number of characters:
    16 ( male: 7 / female: 9 )

    A project to evolve apes into humans is underway in a state-of-the-art biology lab. In the adjacent students' hangout, where this play is set, nonsensical conversations take place. Through them, this piece talks about issues such as bioethics and evolution.
    Engaged in the state-of-the-art study of evolution, the group of scientists shown here are worried about ordinary private matters like love affairs and their future careers. This commemorative first piece of Oriza Hirata's Science Series, followed by "The Northernmost Monkeys" and "The Balkan Zoo," depicts the young generation of Japan today. It has been repeatedly performed by various groups, including the college drama major students.

    ★ Translated Scripts (Korean, English)

  • Citizens of Seoul

    ソウル市民 / Seoul Shimin

    year created:
    1989
    length:
    1hour 30min.
    number of characters:
    18 ( male: 7 / female: 11 )

    Seoul, 1909, one year before Japan's complete colonization of Korea. This piece depicts one afternoon in the living room of a Japanese family who own a stationery store. Various people pass by and have innocent conversations, revealing the subconscious discrimination and sense of superiority of people living in a colony.
    First presented in 1989, this piece is one of the most representative works of Seinendan and has been repeatedly presented, including the production in Seoul and Pusan, Korea, in 1993. The title "Seoul Shimin" is taken from James Joyce's "Dubliners" whose title in Japanese is "Dublin Shimin."

    ★ Translated Scripts (Korean, English, French, Russian)

    ★ DVD with Subtitles(Korean, English, French)

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