Also available on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/c/SpeakingofShakespeare.
[See SEGMENTS below] Thomas Dabbs speaks with Shoichiro Kawai of the University of Tokyo about his role as a director, playwright, translator, and scholar. Professor Kawai directs The Kawai Project, a multi-volume series that has staged productions of 'Much Ado about Nothing,' 'The Comedy of Errors,' and other Shakespearean plays and adaptations. Kawai has also adapted Samuel Beckett's 'Waiting for Godot' for the Japanese stage and has produced a Beckett-esque drama drawing from Shakespeare and echoing Beckett entitled 'Waiting for Will.'
LINKS:
Kawai Project (in Japanese): https://www.kawaiproject.com
SEGMENTS:
00:00:00 - Intro
00:02:08 - The Holy Trinity of being a Shakespearean
00:02:40 - Kawai Project: Waiting for Will and Samuel Beckett, Jean Jean Theatre
00:11:45 - Kawai Project: Translating ‘Waiting for Godot’ and ‘Waiting for Will’
00:14:13 - Kawai Project: Much Ado about Nothing’: Immersive theatre
00:15:05 - Kawai Project: Comedy of Errors’ and ‘As You Like It’
00:17:35 - Translating and writing plays in Japanese
00:18:45 - Kawai’s and translation theory: ‘To Be or Not To Be’
00:35:20 - Shakespeare: ‘Master of the Theatre of Life’
00:40:30 - Cultural adaptation: Bunraku and (mostly) Kyōgen
00:49:20 - Critical theory vs doing and mimicry
00:52:16 - Coming work: Maugham, Poe, The Tempest, Henry IV
00:56:40 - The need for more Shakespearean drama
00:59:30 - Other Shakespearean activities in Japan, King Lear (again)
01:01:03 - Young Kawai and turning to theatre and Shakespeare
01:13:10 - Closing remarks, Hamlet is Fat