Online Seminars: Japanese Theatre in Diaspora Pandeminars 2023

J-PEST (the Japanese Pandemic Electronic Salon for Theatre) cordially invites you to a series of online seminars examining diasporic Japanese theatre.

J-PEST J-Theatre Pandeminars 2023 Online Seminar Series

Diasporic J-Theatre Discoveries: disruption, displacement, distance

ディアスポラ・シアター・デｲスカバリー

デｲスラプション・デｲスプレースメント・デｲスタンス

Online Zoom event (registration required), working language English

March 16, 17, & 21, 2023
Times vary (please see below)
Registration https://forms.gle/97MbKuFZ9X3eKh4Y9

A trio of online pandeminars (pandemic-era seminars) regarding J-theatre in the diaspora will take place March 16th (play reading and discussion, Yudai Kamisato), March 17th (Japanese theatre performers working in Europe and New York), and 21st (founders of intensive noh training programs in the 1980s). These are free and open to the public.

The 2023 Pandeminars are a series of online conversations, play-readings, and interviews intended to tease out J-theatre’s global and local experiments at the margins of contemporary performance and society. Despite upheavals of civil and global wars, rapid modernization, and the current pandemic, Japanese theatre has maintained stability by utilizing conservative traditional theatre guild structures, government support, and insular theatre companies. Yet the Covid-19 pandemic has turned a brighter light on the creative margins of the theatre world, illuminating historic and recent playwrights, performers, and producers venturing beyond conventional borders (national, regional, actual/virtual).

Pandeminars 2023 takes up the theme of Diasporic J-Theatre Discoveries in play themes and practice in the time of Covid. The disruption in theatrical organizations, displacement of performers, and distancing—whether physically, socially, or virtually—over the past three years will be interrogated with those “on the front lines” of playwriting, producing, performing, and mediating:

Crossing Borders – Yudai Kamisato’s Theatre / Happy Prince Fish Play Reading
March 16th @ 8:00 - 10:00 EST / 12:00 - 14:00 GMT / 21:00 - 23:00 JST 

Japanese Performing Artists Working Abroad – The New Creative Diaspora?
March 17th @ 9:00 - 11: 00 EST / 13:00 - 15:00 GMT / 22:00 - 24:00 JST 

Cultural Diaspora – Challenges of Early Noh Training Programs for Foreigners

March 20th @ 21:00 - 23:00 EST / Mar 21st @ 1:00 - 3:00 GMT / 10:00 - 12:00 JST 

Further details of speakers and content:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LhLidfQZ5Od_IeDiUu1ur6-1HmqZhC1jVPybkkaeNXU/edit

J-PEST is an online research salon begun in May 2020 to console and contemplate the vast changes in global and J-Theatre. Last year’s Pandeminar Series, on the theme of “Hoping and Coping ‘with Covid’,” is available at https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1M5npNH7xXr0vlsF55q200sb7_E5fDs01?usp=share_link. 

For further information: j.theatrepandeminar@gmail.com

Jonah Salz, Ryukoku University, Faculty of International Studies (jonah@world.ryukoku.ac.jp)

＊The schedule varies according to American, European, and Japanese-based presenters; please confirm above. A Zoom link will be sent to registrants, as well as additional resources. For those unable to attend, video and other materials will be available as an archive following the sessions.