SEINENDAN

Seinendan is a theater company formed by Oriza Hirata in Tokyo in 1983. Seinendan have been pursuing a new theatrical style through the practice of Hirata's "contemporary colloquial theater theory." This totally new style has had a strong influence on Japanese theater since the 1990s as well as on vast areas such as literature, linguistic study and language education.
Seinendan’s goals include establishing a new form of expression that can even alter the framework of theater itself, based on a unique combination of Seinendan’s theatrical theory and practice.

Staff

Director: Oriza Hirata
A playwright and director, Oriza Hirata is one of the key figures in the contemporary theater scene in Japan. While in college Hirata founded Seinendan Theater Company to pursue and practice his "contemporary colloquial theater theory."
Hirata claims that modern theater in Japan, which started out by importing the Western modern theater, has also lead to playwriting governed by Western logic. Thus, he believes, writing styles and logical structures irrelevant to the Japanese language have been routinely practiced, and in trying to give those irrelevant styles reality the actors have been forced into distorted acting styles too. This is the heart of Hirata's criticism of the conventional Japanese theater.
The Komaba Agora Theater, Seinendan's home base where Hirata is artistic director, is a house for exchange of information between both national and international theater troupes. Hirata has been playing a great role in introducing regional theater companies to Tokyo audiences for almost 20 years through Agora Theater's various programs including the End-of-Millennium Theater Festival where he was festival director.

Actor
Kohey Nitanda, Soge Shin, Hideki Nagai, Miyuki Moriuchi