- Convenors:
-
Beri Juraic
Ana Elena Puga (The Ohio State University)
Send message to Convenors
- Format:
- Panel
- Section:
- Performing Arts
Short Abstract
This panel explores the rehearsal practices of some of the leading contemporary Japanese theatre makers, revealing the creative chaos and meticulous methods behind performances, offering rare insights into the processes seldom discussed in scholarship and beyond.
Long Abstract
This panel investigates rehearsal practices in contemporary Japanese theatre, offering rare, behind-the-scenes insights into the creative processes and collaborations that shape performances. While scholarship often privileges performance analysis of finished productions, rehearsals reveal the negotiations, improvisations, choices, and collaborative decisions that define theatre-making today.
The first paper explores Toshiki Okada’s The Window of Spaceship IN-BETWEEN (2023) from an actress’s perspective, tracing how performing in a non-native language intersects with social, linguistic, and dramaturgical contexts. The second paper analyses Yudai Kamisato’s Nina Morinomiya’s Sadfunny Journey (2025), focusing on the creative pressures of producing a full-length play within a compressed timeline and its intertextual dialogue with Chekhov’s The Seagull. This panel also considers theatre more broadly by including contemporary dance practices. From a dance dramaturg’s perspective, the third paper explores the works of three choreographers of different generations Akira Kasai, Takao Kawaguchi and Akiko Kitamura and articulates the idea of ‘absence of common ground’ to examining shifting orientations and priorities in Japanese dance today. The final paper compares the rehearsal practices of Miyuki Ikuta and Yuri Yamada, two directors navigating gendered expectations within Japanese theatre companies, revealing strategies that redefine traditional production frameworks.
Together, these studies illuminate the creative chaos and meticulous craft behind performance. They position rehearsal not as a preparatory stage, but as a critical site of analysis. Drawing on participant-observer access, dramaturgical and other types of artistic collaborations, all four presenters foreground process over product, contributing to the emerging field of rehearsal studies. By examining rehearsals as sites of meaning-making, this panel challenges conventional notions of authorship, performance, access and responsibility, expanding our understanding of contemporary Japanese theatre beyond the stage.
Keywords: theatre, performance, rehearsal process, dramaturgy, creative process, dance, multilingualism, gender
| Abstract in Japanese (if needed) |
Accepted papers
Paper short abstract
Examines Kamisato’s compressed rehearsal process for "Nina Morinomiya’s Sadfunny Journey" (2025), highlighting improvisation, intertextuality with Chekhov, and collaborative strategies under tight deadlines。
Paper long abstract
On November 11, 2025—the first day of rehearsals for Nina Morinomiya’s Sadfunny Journey—playwright-director Kamisato Yudai arrived with only thirteen pages of script, a third of what he had intended to present. Apologetic yet determined, he improvised by introducing Chekhov’s The Seagull as a reference point, explaining that his Nina was inspired by Chekhov’s character. Over the next 25 days, Kamisato navigated a compressed timeline, transforming fragments into a fully staged 90-minute performance. The resulting work was an eclectic interplay of themes, cross-cultural layering, and purposeful chronotopic dissonance, enriched by striking lines, movement, and imagery.
Drawing on participant-observer access to rehearsals and informal conversations with the creative team, this paper examines how Kamisato’s process exemplifies the dynamics of creating under pressure. It interrogates the balance between improvisation and structure, the role of intertextuality, and the collaborative negotiations that shape meaning-making in contemporary Japanese theatre. By foregrounding rehearsal as a site of creative resilience, this study offers insights into the adaptability and aesthetic strategies that may emerge under time constraints.
Paper short abstract
From a dance dramaturg’s perspective, this paper examines contemporary dance practices in Japan through tensions between absent disciplinary foundations and expectations of shared understanding. It explores rehearsal processes as sites of shifting artistic and bodily orientations.
Paper long abstract
Contemporary dance in Japan is often described as lacking shared disciplinary foundations and formal professional training, allowing diverse artistic backgrounds to coexist without a stable common ground. At the same time, these practices unfold within a social context of implicit homogeneity, where shared norms are often assumed rather than articulated. This produces a tension between the absence of a given common ground and the expectation of shared understanding.
Within this tension, rehearsal processes become a crucial site where artists cultivate distinct approaches: at times orienting toward shared bodily languages, and at others toward their relativisation and the articulation of difference.
Situated within this dynamic, this paper asks what forms of process-oriented dramaturgy emerge in such settings. Drawing on works by Takao Kawaguchi, Akira Kasai, and Akiko Kitamura, it examines how a range of bodily and artistic practices give rise to dramaturgical effects that engage with and support these shifting orientations.
Paper short abstract
Compares rehearsal approaches of Miyuki Ikuta and Yuri Yamada, showing how they navigate gendered expectations and reshape production frameworks within Japanese theatre companies. Their practices signify a pivotal shift in rehearsal dynamics and gender relations within Japanese theatre.
Paper long abstract
The foundation of Japanese theatre production lies primarily in gekidan (theatre companies) rather than in gekijō (theatre institutions). These companies can be broadly categorized into two organizational types: multi-director companies rooted in the tradition of shingeki (new theatre), and single playwright-director companies associated with shōgekijō engeki (small-scale theatre). Historically, both types have been dominated by male directors.
This paper examines the historical presence of female directors in contemporary Japanese theatre and analyzes their production and rehearsal processes within these two organizational models. Through two case studies, it first examines Miyuki Ikuta, who balances her role in Bungakuza’s directing department with her independent unit, Risei-teki na Henjin-tachi (Rational Eccentrics). Trained as a director within the shingeki tradition, Ikuta is known for her meticulous approach to character development. While operating inside an established institutional framework, her independent unit allows her to experiment with aesthetic and rehearsal practices that are difficult to pursue within the conventional production system.
It then examines Yuri Yamada, the playwright-director of Zeitaku Binbō, a small-scale theatre company. Yamada’s works foreground social issues that have been largely underrepresented in Japanese theatre, particularly from a female perspective. Seeking to create a creative environment unbound by conventional hierarchies, she opens her rehearsal process to the public through an “open studio”—a practice that remains relatively rare within Japanese theatre production.
By comparing their distinct approaches, this study offers structural insights into rehearsal dynamics and the shifting gender landscape in contemporary Japanese theatre, highlighting how these women navigate and redefine traditional production frameworks.
Paper short abstract
Explores how acting in a non-native language shapes performance in Toshiki Okada’s The Window of Spaceship IN-BETWEEN (2023), revealing intersections of linguistic, social, and dramaturgical contexts.
Paper long abstract
This paper examines the creative process of The Window of Spaceship IN-BETWEEN, a
performance by the Japanese theatre company chelfitsch, written and directed by Toshiki Okada.
It traces the work’s development from a series of workshops with non-native Japanese speakers
conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic through the rehearsal process, premiere in 2023, and
subsequent performances and festival presentations in This Japan and internationally.
Focusing on acting in a non-native language, the paper investigates how performance is shaped
by social, linguistic, and theatrical contexts, and how dramaturgical strategies frame audience
understanding while engaging with the politics of language. Drawing on a first-person
perspective, it offers a reflective account of the creative process from the actors’ point of view.