Available in EN/繫体/簡体/KR/JP Subtitles

Shizuoka Prefecture was selected as a Culture City of East Asia in 2023. World Theatre Festival Shizuoka 2023 , held by SPAC (Shizuoka Performing Arts Center) , included productions invited from China and South Korea and a special talk with Japanese, Chinese, and South Korean directors. Representing their respective countries and generations, the directors discussed their discovery of theater, cultural exchange in Asia, the potential of theater in modern society, and their outlook for the future.

What is East Asia Culture City?
“Culture City of East Asia” is a city that aims to develop through culture and the arts in three countries, Japan, China, and South Korea, and is selected in principle as one city each year based on the agreement reached at the Trilateral Culture Ministers Meeting of Japan, China, and South Korea. This is a national project that carries out art events, etc. Through this, we aim to promote mutual understanding and the formation of a sense of solidarity within the Asian region, as well as strengthen the ability to disseminate East Asia’s diverse cultures internationally.

The aim is also for cities selected as East Asian Cultural Cities to continue to develop through the implementation of the project by leveraging their cultural characteristics and promoting the promotion of culture, arts, creative industries, and tourism.

In 2023, 10 years after the creation of the Culture City of East Asia initiative, as well as the 10th anniversary of Mt. Fuji being designated a World Heritage site , Shizuoka Prefecture was chosen as a Culture City of East Asia along with the three cities of Chengdu and Meizhou in China and Jeonju in South Korea. As a cultural capital of Japan, Shizuoka launched Culture City of East Asia 2023 SHIZUOKA . Throughout the year, a wide variety of events were staged non-stop all over the prefecture, sharing the charm of Shizuoka’s and Japan’s culture with the world.

Presented by The Japan Foundation (JF) (https://www.jpf.go.jp/e/)

Recorded on April 30th, 2022, at WORLD THEATRE FESTIVAL SHIZUOKA (https://festival-shizuoka.jp/en/event/special-talk/)
Produced by SPAC-Shizuoka Performing Arts Center (https://spac.or.jp/en/)

Panelists: MENG Jinghui (Director, Meng Theatre Studio), JUN Inchul (Director, Theatre Company Dolpagu), MIYAGI Satoshi (Director, General artistic director of Shiuoka Performing Arts Center (SPAC))
MC: NAKAI Miho (Announcer)

＜Panelist Profiles＞
MENG Jinghui
Director, Meng Theatre Studio
A theatre director. His theatre creations extract the reality entanglement, emotional confusion, and human dilemma in ordinary life through different perspectives. His creations include expression-istic ego involvement, new objectivity’s sober rumination, the wanderings in the aesthetic of an absurdist. He has a unique style, and revolutionized contemporary theater by sending a torrent of diverse new voices onto the stage. His idiosyncratic and diverse artistic style have developed into a cultural phenomenon.

His notable stage productions include: Rhinoceros in Love, Opinions about Life from Two Dogs, Teahouse, To Live, Red and Black, The Seventh Day, Linchuan Four Dreams, Amber, The Murder of Hanging Garden, Soft, A Letter From A Woman Unknown, Bonjour Tristesse, Accidental Death of an Anarchist, He Had Two Pistols with Black and White Eyes, The Bedbug, The Good Person of Si-chuan, Guns Lies and Roses, I Love XXX, Newest Concept of the End-result of Love, Mermaid in the Backwater.

Wrote Meng Jinghui’s Avant-Garde Drama and New Avant-Garde Archive.
Meng Jinghui’s works has presented in many international art festivals, also toured in Germany, the United States, Japan, France, the United Kingdoms, Italy, Spain, Australia, Brazil, Egypt and so on.

In recent years, Meng founded and served as the artistic director of the Beijing International Fringe Festival, Wuzhen Festival, Hangzhou International Theatre Festival, Aranya Theater Festi-val, Shenzhen Contemporary Theatre Biennale, and other major theatre festivals.

JUN Inchul
Director, Theatre Company Dolpagu
JUN Inchul is recognized with his signature style of detailed portraits of Korean social contextsand unconventional construction of spaces in his plays. He founded Theatre Company Dolpagu with his colleagues in 2015 and has been focusing on topics of ‘class’, ‘youth’ and ‘gender’. With its statement ‘We are All Connected’, Dolpagu is connecting ‘generation’, ‘places’ and ‘actors’ through its plays.

Recently Dolpagu majorly develop works on SF genre and by Korean new playwrights. It has been working on adapting SF novels on ‘science’, ‘space’ and ‘ageing’ into plays and produced ‘Space Theatre’ series in collaboration with Science Contents Group GALDA. The company also actively collaborate with rising Korean playwrights and produced ‘Today’s Play’ series with Sinchon Arts Space.

MIYAGI Satoshi
Director, General Artistic Director of Shiuoka Performing Arts Center (SPAC)
Born in Tokyo in 1959, after studying aesthetics at Tokyo University under ODASHIMA Yushi, WATANABE Moriaki and HIDAKA Hachiro, he founded the KU NA’ UKA theater company in 1990 and soon began staging plays overseas as well as in Japan. As a result, MIYAGI’s work — in which he often fuses contemporary textual interpretations with physical techniques and patterns of Asian theatre — has long been acclaimed both at home and far beyond. Indeed, in 2004 he received the 3rd Asahi Performing Arts Award, and the next year the 2nd Asahi Beer Art Award. Since taking up his position with SPAC in April 2007, MIYAGI has staged many of his own works — including “Medea”, the Hindu epic “Mahabharata”, and “Peer Gynt” — and has invited artists from abroad to present pieces casting a keen eye on the modern world as they see it. In line with his aim to make theatre “a window to the world,” he has also started a new SPAC-based project aimed at the youth of Shizuoka. In 2014, MIYAGI was invited to the Festival d’Avignon, where he received excellent reviews for his open-air version of the Hindu epic “Mahabharata” staged in La Carrière de Bourbon. Following that landmark achievement, the festival extended the honor of inviting MIYAGI to present a Buddhist interpretation he created of the ancient Greek mythological tragedy “Antigone” as its super-prestigious opening program for 2017. On that occasion, which was the first time an Asian play had ever been selected to launch the festival, MIYAGI’s exalted “stage” was the open-air Cour d’honneur du Palais des papes (the Honor Court of the Palace of Popes). By the play’s end, those towering medieval stone walls were ringing out with long and splendid standing ovations welcoming the work’s director and creator along with SPAC’s actors and staff — while more than 60 European media all gave great reviews. In 2018, he received the 68th Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology’s Art Encouragement Prize of Drama. Also he recieved “Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres” from the Ministry of Culture of France in 2018.