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Welcome
to the English Homepage of The Third Stage!
Kôkami Shoji, who heads the Third
Stage, is a playwright and director. See his biography and the
synopses of a few of his plays.
If you have a query about Kokami's
plays and performances, contact him at office1©thirdstage.com (please
change © to @)
(English
only).
KÔKAMI Shoji
Kôkami, a playwright and director, has been an outstanding
figure in Japanese theatre since the 1980s. His first overseas
production was in 1991, when he brought The Angel
with Closed Eyes to
London (Mermaid Theatre), Belfast, and Edinburgh as part of
the Japan Festival; those performances were in Japanese with
English subtitles. In 1997 he studied the British method of
actor training at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama,
London , on a Japanese government grant.
He writes and directs for his production company, “KOKAMI@network” and for other organizations; in 2004 he directed “Romeo
and Juliet” at the Tokyo Globe Theatre, and on the invitation of Yukio Ninagawa
he directed The Merry Wives of Windsor in 2002.
In 1995 Kôkami received the prestigious Kishida Drama Prize for
Snufkin's Letter. His other awards include the Grand Prix for Tokyo
Game in the short film category of the San Diego Film Festival
(1994) and the Kinokuniya Drama Award in the Group Category for
With a Sunset Like the Morning Sun (1987).
A board member of the Japan Playwrights Association, Japan Directors
Association, and Association of Japanese Theatre Companies, Kôkami
is also the author of a textbook, Lessons
for Voice and Body. He
regularly hosts radio and TV programs and contributes to professional
publications.
Kôkami was born in Ehime prefecture in 1958. While at Waseda University,
he launched The Third Stage Theatre Company, for which he wrote
and directed more than twenty plays. His works continue to attract
audiences in the thousands.
- What's New?
6-30 June 2007: The world premiere of an English Language
version of TRANCE ,
directed by Kokami, at the Bush Theatre, London.
The overwhelmingly positive response to the rehearsed reading in
February 2006 at the Bush Theatre demonstrated that this play crosses
English-Japanese cultural boundaries and merits a full-scale production
in English.
Cast
Masa: Stephen Darcy
Reiko: Meredith MacNeill
Sanzo: Rhashan Stone
For further details see http://www.bushtheatre.co.uk/productions/trance.html.
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