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Ninagawa Yukio
Awhile back, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bronze_ribbons wrote a Haru ficlet called More Than Kin and Less Than Kind, in which Katou is offered the role of Hamlet in a production by a famous director named Ninagawa. His nemesis (and my fave character) Kikuchi is supposed to play the role of Hamlet's villainous stepfather Claudius. I was so tickled by the idea, that I ended up writing a few follow-up fics to that story: Realism (Hamlet Done Haru-style), Strange Bedfellows, and Much Ado About...Something?
What I hadn't realized, until we got into a discussion in the comments on the IJ "Realism" post, was that Ribbons had based the Ninagawa character on a real person, who is indeed famous for his Shakespeare productions. I was surprised, and thought he sounded like an interesting person, but really didn't think much about it after that. Until last week, that is, when I was channel-surfing and came across an (English language) NHK World special on Ninagawa Yukio on the local PBS affiliate.
Unfortunately, I missed the beginning of the show, but the portion that I managed to catch was really fascinating. According to the show, Ninagawa worked in indie theater when he was young, and did a play based on the student protests of the 1960s and 70s, reflecting on the stagnation of Japanese society at the time. He spoke of an incident that affected him deeply: a young man ran into him at a movie theater, and although Ninagawa just wanted to watch the movie, the man insisted on talking to him, and convinced Ninagawa to go to a cafe with him. Suddenly Ninagawa felt something pressing into his side--the young man was holding a pocket knife against him, and asked if he was going to talk about hope. "What hope is there to speak of?" Ninagawa replied. And the man said something like, "Good. If you had talked about hope, I would have had to stab you." Ninagawa said he never realized before that people had been watching his plays so intently, and after that, he felt like a thousand eyes were watching him, holding a thousand knives.
Incidentally, on a completely unrelated note, that turbulent era of the student protests indirectly plays a significant role in my favorite Japanese detective drama, Aibou. There's a recurring plot that pops up from time to time over the various seasons, involving the (fictional) Red Canary terrorist group, an organization that grew out of the student protests. There is also a movie called My Back Page that depicts both the idealism and the violence of that movement.
Getting back to Ninagawa, some time after the encounter with the knife-wielding man, he left the small independent theaters to become a commercial theater director--something that earned him a lot of criticism from his comrades. He said, only half-jokingly, that he still bears wounds from the harsh words that people threw at him. He said that theater is theater and it doesn't matter where the funding comes from, but also that theater is a community, and he understands why his indie theater associates felt betrayed.
It was after he turned "commercial" that he began staging Shakespeare plays. They showed brief clips of a production he did of MacBeth where the setting was changed to 16th century Japan, during the Warring States period. It looked really stunning--I wish I could have seen the whole thing! He also spoke of being deeply moved and inspired by Hamlet when he first read the play in high school. The show had him reading excerpts of Hamlet in Japanese--he used to be an actor in his youth before he became a director, and it showed in his performance. Even in a simple script reading, he spoke with emotion and power.
It's his favorite play--he has staged it seven times, and feels he probably isn't done with it yet. He said that he's never quite satisfied with his productions of it: for example, in the first one, he feels like he placed too much emphasis on Hamlet's relationship with his father. He tried compensate in the next production, but feels like he can never get it quite right, but perhaps that’s a good thing. He used unique staging in his various productions: in one, the stage was broken up into different compartments, including the dressing rooms, thereby blending both reality and fiction. In another, he used a two-level stage, with the floor of the upper level being made of glass: the lower level represents the characters' secret lives, which the characters looking down on from above can see through. When he was asked if was going to do another Hamlet, he laughed and said he probably would. Fujiwara Tatsuya, an actor that's he worked with several times, apparently said that he will be Ninagawa's last Hamlet. At first I thought that meant he had already played Hamlet and doesn't want there to be another after him, but from what Ninagawa was saying, it sounds like Fujiwara hasn't played Hamlet yet, so he'll have to stage it at least one more time. Incidentally, Fujiwara is best known to most Western fans for playing Light in the live action Death Note movies, and until I saw this NHK special, I wasn't aware that he was also a stage actor.
The show went on to reveal that Ninagawa teaches theater to senior citizen groups, and also to young actors. The pros of the senior actors are that they have much life experience and emotion to draw on, which the young actors lack. However, the seniors lack the physical strength of the young actors. They can also be self-centered, but Ninagawa laughed and said that's a good thing. He said that the young actors are more reserved, because they’re used to expressing their emotions through Twitter and e-mail and such, which to him are not real emotions, and he has to teach them how to project strong emotions.
He seemed to be both strict and compassionate with the young actor group. He told them that he still remembers how hurt he was when as a young actor, a TV director told him, "Stop overacting, kid!" He said he would rather say, "I want you to reach your full potential." He then went on to say that he probably will end up hurting their feelings, but "So what? That will help you to grow."
He seems to be stricter with his professional adult actors. He talked about how in the past--I think this was during his indie days, but I'm not sure--he would have to get after his actors to project their voices fully during rehearsals, because they would hold back, complaining that they'd be hoarse during the actual show. He'd yell at them, and eventually they'd do as he asked, but then they would indeed end up hoarse during the actual show. (Which indicates to me that they probably weren't projecting properly. I used to do a bit of theater work in college, mostly backstage crew stuff because I never learned how to project properly either.)
Ninagawa is still going strong (at age 76 in 2012, when the piece was filmed), but is mindful of the limited time he has left, when he used to think that time was infinite when he was young. That sense of mortality is what drives him to keep going, because he has so much more to do, and he doesn’t want to end up sitting in a room being retired and bored.
I got the impression that he can be very strict as a director (I suspect he'd probably have little patience for Katou and Kikuchi's shenanigans), but also that he does have a sense of humor, and that as a former actor, he understands how actors think. And that he is very passionate about and devoted to his work. I doubt that I will ever get the chance to see one of his productions, but the tantalizing glimpses I've seen on the special really make me wish that I could.
bronze_ribbons wrote a Haru ficlet called More Than Kin and Less Than Kind, in which Katou is offered the role of Hamlet in a production by a famous director named Ninagawa. His nemesis (and my fave character) Kikuchi is supposed to play the role of Hamlet's villainous stepfather Claudius. I was so tickled by the idea, that I ended up writing a few follow-up fics to that story: Realism (Hamlet Done Haru-style), Strange Bedfellows, and Much Ado About...Something?What I hadn't realized, until we got into a discussion in the comments on the IJ "Realism" post, was that Ribbons had based the Ninagawa character on a real person, who is indeed famous for his Shakespeare productions. I was surprised, and thought he sounded like an interesting person, but really didn't think much about it after that. Until last week, that is, when I was channel-surfing and came across an (English language) NHK World special on Ninagawa Yukio on the local PBS affiliate.
Unfortunately, I missed the beginning of the show, but the portion that I managed to catch was really fascinating. According to the show, Ninagawa worked in indie theater when he was young, and did a play based on the student protests of the 1960s and 70s, reflecting on the stagnation of Japanese society at the time. He spoke of an incident that affected him deeply: a young man ran into him at a movie theater, and although Ninagawa just wanted to watch the movie, the man insisted on talking to him, and convinced Ninagawa to go to a cafe with him. Suddenly Ninagawa felt something pressing into his side--the young man was holding a pocket knife against him, and asked if he was going to talk about hope. "What hope is there to speak of?" Ninagawa replied. And the man said something like, "Good. If you had talked about hope, I would have had to stab you." Ninagawa said he never realized before that people had been watching his plays so intently, and after that, he felt like a thousand eyes were watching him, holding a thousand knives.
Incidentally, on a completely unrelated note, that turbulent era of the student protests indirectly plays a significant role in my favorite Japanese detective drama, Aibou. There's a recurring plot that pops up from time to time over the various seasons, involving the (fictional) Red Canary terrorist group, an organization that grew out of the student protests. There is also a movie called My Back Page that depicts both the idealism and the violence of that movement.
Getting back to Ninagawa, some time after the encounter with the knife-wielding man, he left the small independent theaters to become a commercial theater director--something that earned him a lot of criticism from his comrades. He said, only half-jokingly, that he still bears wounds from the harsh words that people threw at him. He said that theater is theater and it doesn't matter where the funding comes from, but also that theater is a community, and he understands why his indie theater associates felt betrayed.
It was after he turned "commercial" that he began staging Shakespeare plays. They showed brief clips of a production he did of MacBeth where the setting was changed to 16th century Japan, during the Warring States period. It looked really stunning--I wish I could have seen the whole thing! He also spoke of being deeply moved and inspired by Hamlet when he first read the play in high school. The show had him reading excerpts of Hamlet in Japanese--he used to be an actor in his youth before he became a director, and it showed in his performance. Even in a simple script reading, he spoke with emotion and power.
It's his favorite play--he has staged it seven times, and feels he probably isn't done with it yet. He said that he's never quite satisfied with his productions of it: for example, in the first one, he feels like he placed too much emphasis on Hamlet's relationship with his father. He tried compensate in the next production, but feels like he can never get it quite right, but perhaps that’s a good thing. He used unique staging in his various productions: in one, the stage was broken up into different compartments, including the dressing rooms, thereby blending both reality and fiction. In another, he used a two-level stage, with the floor of the upper level being made of glass: the lower level represents the characters' secret lives, which the characters looking down on from above can see through. When he was asked if was going to do another Hamlet, he laughed and said he probably would. Fujiwara Tatsuya, an actor that's he worked with several times, apparently said that he will be Ninagawa's last Hamlet. At first I thought that meant he had already played Hamlet and doesn't want there to be another after him, but from what Ninagawa was saying, it sounds like Fujiwara hasn't played Hamlet yet, so he'll have to stage it at least one more time. Incidentally, Fujiwara is best known to most Western fans for playing Light in the live action Death Note movies, and until I saw this NHK special, I wasn't aware that he was also a stage actor.
The show went on to reveal that Ninagawa teaches theater to senior citizen groups, and also to young actors. The pros of the senior actors are that they have much life experience and emotion to draw on, which the young actors lack. However, the seniors lack the physical strength of the young actors. They can also be self-centered, but Ninagawa laughed and said that's a good thing. He said that the young actors are more reserved, because they’re used to expressing their emotions through Twitter and e-mail and such, which to him are not real emotions, and he has to teach them how to project strong emotions.
He seemed to be both strict and compassionate with the young actor group. He told them that he still remembers how hurt he was when as a young actor, a TV director told him, "Stop overacting, kid!" He said he would rather say, "I want you to reach your full potential." He then went on to say that he probably will end up hurting their feelings, but "So what? That will help you to grow."
He seems to be stricter with his professional adult actors. He talked about how in the past--I think this was during his indie days, but I'm not sure--he would have to get after his actors to project their voices fully during rehearsals, because they would hold back, complaining that they'd be hoarse during the actual show. He'd yell at them, and eventually they'd do as he asked, but then they would indeed end up hoarse during the actual show. (Which indicates to me that they probably weren't projecting properly. I used to do a bit of theater work in college, mostly backstage crew stuff because I never learned how to project properly either.)
Ninagawa is still going strong (at age 76 in 2012, when the piece was filmed), but is mindful of the limited time he has left, when he used to think that time was infinite when he was young. That sense of mortality is what drives him to keep going, because he has so much more to do, and he doesn’t want to end up sitting in a room being retired and bored.
I got the impression that he can be very strict as a director (I suspect he'd probably have little patience for Katou and Kikuchi's shenanigans), but also that he does have a sense of humor, and that as a former actor, he understands how actors think. And that he is very passionate about and devoted to his work. I doubt that I will ever get the chance to see one of his productions, but the tantalizing glimpses I've seen on the special really make me wish that I could.