Chiten Theatre: The Gambler

Additional Information

Photo by Shotaro Ichihashi

 

Chiten Theatre Company
Chiten, meaning “locus” or “point”, is a theatre company led by director Motoi Miura. It specializes in performances created out of collages using fragments of existing texts, including work by Shakespeare, Chekhov and Brecht. Employing an original linguistic style, cadence and rhythm of language are delayed to expose the raw sound of the words liberated from their meanings. Miura dissects the text and words, then works together with actors, musicians, stage artists, lighting artists and others who give expression to his dissected text and brings to the stage a reconstructed embodiment of the artistic world created by the original playwright.

 

Motoi Miura
Born in 1973, Miura graduated from the Toho Gakuen College of Drama and Music. In 1996 he joined Seinendan Theater Company, where he worked as an assistant director to Oriza Hirata and as full-time staff at Komaba Agora Theatre. From 1999 he studied in Paris for two years on a government scholarship, learning directing, arts management and artistic directorship under Jacques Blanc. He returned to Japan in 2001 and started his work with his company Chiten, directing Japan premières of plays by Jon Fosse and David Harrower. In 2005 he left Seinendan and moved to Kyoto, and won the Outstanding Performance Award at the Toga Director Contest. He has been re-creating the four masterpieces of Chekhov since 2007 and in the same year he received the Agency of Cultural Affairs New Director Award for his production of “The Cherry Orchard”. In 2010 he received the Kyoto Prefecture Culture Award and his first book on production theory Is just being interesting OK? was published. He has won many other awards. Among his productions are Philip Glassʼs opera In the Penal Colony (2008), Elfriede Jelinek’s Kein Licht. (2012), and Beltort Brecht’s Fatzer (2013).

 

Fyodor Dostoevsky
Fyodor Dostoevsky was born in Moscow in 1821 and introduced to storytelling at an early age. His debut novella Poor Folk brought brief success in St Petersburg’s literary circles, but his involvement in a discussion group banned under Tsarist rule led to imprisonment in Siberia and years of enforced military service. His experiences there inspired The House of the Dead.

During the 1860s, Dostoevsky lived in Europe, producing his major works Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, and Demons. His final novel, The Brothers Karamazov, is widely regarded as his masterpiece.

Renowned for his polyphonic narratives and probing explorations of faith, morality, and society, Dostoevsky also wrote short stories, essays, and journalism, and translated Balzac, Sand, and Schiller into Russian.

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