Yukio Ninagawa
| Yukio Ninagawa 蜷川幸雄 |
|
|---|---|
| Born |
にながわ ゆきお October 15, 1935 Kawaguchi, Saitama, Japan |
| Died | May 12, 2016 (aged 80) Tokyo, Japan |
| Cause of death | Pneumonia |
| Occupation | Theatre director Film director |
| Years active | 1969–2016 |
Yukio Ninagawa (蜷川 幸雄|Ninagawa Yukio, October 15, 1935 – May 12, 2016) was a Japanese theatre director, particularly known for his Japanese language productions of Shakespeare plays and Greek tragedies. He directed Hamlet differently eight times.
Although most famous abroad for his touring productions of European classics, Ninagawa also directed works based on contemporary writing from Japan, including the Modern Noh plays of Yukio Mishima (which toured to New York's Lincoln Center in early summer 2005) and several other plays by Japanese dramatists, including Shūji Terayama and Kunio Shimizu. His production of Titus Andronicus was performed in England in June 2006, at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford and the Theatre Royal in Plymouth. In 2007 his company participated in the Barbican International Theatre Event (BITE) series at the Barbican Arts Centre in London, with their production of Coriolanus.
In 1955 Ninagawa first joined theatre company "Seihai" (‘young actors’). In 1967 he left the group and set up his own theatre company, "Gendaijin-Gekijo" (‘modern people's theatre’). He made his debut as a director in 1969 with Shinjo afururu keihakusa (‘genuine frivolity’?). After the disbandment of “Gendaijin-Gekijo” in 1971, in the following year he established a new theatre company called "Sakura-sha" ('cherry blossom company'), which once again resulted in disbandment three years later, 1974.
At the same time, the year 1974 has become the turning point for Ninagawa, when the then Toho theatre producer Tadao Nakane invited him to direct big theatres, and as a result he came to work on a Shakespeare play for the very first time - Romeo and Juliet. Since then, he has become one of the most feted directors in the theatre world. He also often provides interesting topics such as launching the project in 1998 to direct all of Shakespeare's works, or in the year 2000 directing Greeks in which its performance lasted for a total of ten and a half hours.
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