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The profile of a promising young play company from Japan
 

Sample

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ƒContact„
Sachiko Miyoshi (Producer / quinada Inc.)
Tel / +81 90-9393-0809
Fax / +81 3-6478-9515
Email / samplenet@gmail.com
URL / http://www.samplenet.org/
§151-0051@
402, 16-4, 5 Cho-me, Sendagaya
Shibuyaku, Tokyo, Japan

About gSampleh@@EEEEEEEEEEE
It started with my doubt about human nature.
Is there a unified ghuman egoh at all? Even if there is such a thing, isnft it rather a multiform, changeable and temporary thing?
Through my plays I try to portray human beings as gego-lessh animals that happen to use language.
In other words, we assume that human beings never actively choose their actions, but are passively made to choose certain actions. That assumption is at the base of our performance. Everything on the stage ? table, chairs, human beings, air conditioners, fences, and audience ? tempts the actors to certain actions. Actors may also be seduced by their own memories as well as by the environment around them.
My works are there to praise such humans, who are passive and do not deserve to be trusted.

Shu Matsui

Profile of a director & writer@EEEEEEEEEE  

Shu Matsui@iDirector, writer, actorj


Shu Matsui was born in 1972 in Tokyo. He first joined Theatre Company Seinendan in 1996 as an actor, and then also developed his career as writer and director. Both his first play gPassageh and his second gWorld Premiereh won the New Face Award for Writers by the Japan Playwrights Association.
Matsui founded his own company gSampleh in 2007, where he is also writer/director.
His piece written down for Sample in 2008, gFamily Portraith was short listed for the Kunio Kishida Award.
He has also directed several Japanese productions of European plays which include gPhaedrafs Loveh by Sarah Kane and gFire Faceh by Marius von Mayenburg.
His play gShifth was translated to French and performed at actOral6. in Marseille, and gBasementh was performed in Milan in Italian.
Matsui is also a part-time instructor at the Literature Department of Waseda University, Tokyo.


Past works EEEEEEEEEEE
 

@gPASSAGEh

2004.5@ Komaba Agora Theater
’ʉß
design:kyo
The scene is a family that faces all-too-common problems in modern society; impotent husband, wife who is worn out of nursing care of aged parents, extramerital affairs with a former class mate, etc. One day, a man comes into the life of this family, and gradually family members become controlled by an environment created by his idea of gcreating an utopia.h This play attempts to dipict reality by introducing dynamic change of stage scenes and actorsf nuanced and subtle performances. Awarded the 9th New Face Award by the Japan Playwrights Association.

c.Tsukasa Aoki

@ gWORLD PREMIEREh

2005.5@ Komaba Agora Theater
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pictureFAkio Hato
The scene is an institution. In a room, a man is waiting for his turn to have his surgery.
There appears a young man who identifies himself as his son. Unexpected emergence of this young man leads the man to drift through his memories in the past.
All the memories; his wife suffering from infertility, suicide of his uncle who had a business of raising experimental animals, etc. come back to him.
Nevertheless, he wonders if these emerged memories are true or not.
Memories of the dead are glorified in the people who are left behind, but will never be renewed in the dead.
Onefs character is formed based on onefs memories, so people believe, but peoplefs memories are obscure. This drama depicts uncertainty of how the memories form a character, using the crossed time axes and a well constructed story.
The 11th New Face Award by the Japan Playwrights Association

c.Tsukasa Aoki

@gBASEMENTh

2006.5@ Atelier Shumpusha
’n‰ºŽº
design:kyo@photo:momoko japan

This play depicts with realism how a natural food store turns into a cult-like community

The scene is a small natural food store nestled between the circular road and the expressway in metropolitan Tokyo.
The store manager, his son and store attendants form a small self-sufficient commune, selling gwaterh and natural foods.
The son lives in the store basement and produces gwater.h One day, a girl comes to the store seeking for a job. Encounter with the girl makes the son unable to produce gwaterh anymore. gWaterh dries out and the commune gradually falls apart.


c.Tsukasa Aoki

@ gSHIFTh

2007.1@ Atelier Shumpusha
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design:kyo@photo:momoko japan
In a reclusive village, the villagers have intermarried for many generations following their old tradition for a special purpose. That is to produce albinos. It bears close resemblance of breeding dogs. When a huge suburban shopping center emerges, the closed village life is suddenly drawn into a great confusion trying to rehash their old tradition in the surging wave of modernization. This play portrays such confusion from impersonal perspective.

c.Tsukasa Aoki

@gBURNING UP CALORIESh

2007.9@ Mitaka City Arts Center

design:kyo@photo:momoko japan
Lost their goals, modern people are running about in confusion.
This play portlays such modern people by eclectic mix of realism and abusurdity.

First, an episode of a mother and her son came up to my mind.
Then an episode of a detective came up next.
Mother who had been admitted in a nursing home runs away with a helper.
Her son and the detective chase after them.
However, when the evaders try to overtake the chasers, their positions will reverse.
Then, they first realize, gwe did not have to run away or chase after.h
Nevertheless, they do not stop running away or chasing after.
Are they controlled by something?
Do you insist to find the reason?
The only answer is to gburn up calories.

c.Tsukasa Aoki

@gFAMILIY PORTRAITh

2008.8@ Atelire Helicopter

design:kyo@photo:momoko japan
The play is situated in a small supermarket. They sell lunchboxes with discount and give away the surplus to part-timers. As the play follows the whereabouts of the lunchboxes that are sold and given away, solitary lives of the characters are gradually exposed: the shop-manager, a single English conversation lecturer, a shoplifter, a childless couple, a part-timer, a retired teacher of history, her reclusive son and her students. Can we find a thread that connects their apparently unconnected lives?

I want to portray those people who struggle to be mature. I want them to fall upside-down, go off the tracks and make blunders, half deliberately.
A small incident triggers a massive topsy-turvy with a slogan: gIf you find it hard to stand firm, then try falling!h There we can hear them cry gPlease take me with you!h, a cry of pain and joy.
It doesnft matter where they want to be.
They realise that they are in topsy-turvy for no
particular reason.
I want to make positive sense of such a situation,
show that they (we) are no different from you,
and prove that Ifd love to be connected with somebody.
The title gFamily Portraith signifies this impossible desire.

c.Tsukasa Aoki

@gBIOGRAPHYh

2009.1@Komaba Agora Theaterr

design:kyo@photo:momoko japan
A group of people come together to make a biography of a man. They verify a fact and link it to another; reconstruct a scene and interview his relatives; get carried away with their work and get out of control. In short, they pursue their raison dfetre in somebody elsefs biography. It could also be said that they are just creating another gmythh although they may call it a history.

c.Tsukasa Aoki

@gPASSAGEh

2009.5@ Mitaka City Arts Center

design:kyo@photo:momoko japan
When we first played this piece I was often asked what the title gPassageh means. I agree that gPassageh doesnft make a perfect sense by itself. gPassageh is from the phrase ga rite of passageh, but actually the play put more emphasis on the gritualh rather than the gpassageh at that time. Of course that gritualh was quite fictitious and had little to do with real life rituals such as initiation, marriage, having a baby or death. However, it seems that the rituals of passage that we face in the modern world require us to take part in that fiction. We are required to play positive parts in it so that the world materialise.
Thatfs what I thought six years ago.

What about now?
Itfs not that different. Only that Ifm older by six years. When I read the script again, I was struck with the similarity between what I thought then and what I think now. Apart from technical naivety, it seems that this piece was near perfection from the start.
People donft change. But the fact that people donft change can be interpreted either negatively or positively. That ambiguity supports this piece. We may have put a bit too much emphasis on the negative side six years ago. This time Ifd like to hit a better balance. How it will be torn between the two interpretations is the charm and hope of this piece.

c.Tsukasa Aoki


Shu Matsuifs other works EEEEEEEEEEE

@gPHAEDRAfS LOVE h

2008.2@ Sai Studio Komone

design:kyo
When we see a man who tries to take off his clothes of ostentation and eventually peel his skin to expose his true skin, how can we laugh at such a deed as a gself-searching gameh? This mythical world written by Sarah Kane is actually a mirror image of our modern world. Hippolytus, who is confined in a world that stands on cover-ups and common senses that try to hide unpleasant realities, tries to confront that world with his ginnocenth evilness once he receives a baton of gloveh from his mother-in-law, Phaedra. However, where was his enemy in that world? Was the world really against him? Hippolytusfs deed may have been the curse against himself.

c.Tsukasa Aoki

@gFIRE FACE h

2009.3 Tokyo Metropolitan Art Space, Small Hall 1

Festival Tokyo 09 spring

The young Japanese renowned playwright and director Shu Matsui directs Marius von Mayenburg's much talked-about work "Fireface", which left an unforgettable impression on the Japanese audience when it was staged by the German Schaubuehne Theater in 2005. A family of four seems to live a life in harmony when the daughter's boyfriend shows up one day and the family's equilibrium starts to fall apart.

c.Tsukasa Aoki


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