Jonah Isaac Salz

Abstract

This article chronicles the life and work of Jonah Salz, a theatre director, producer, teacher, scholar, and translator, who co-founded both the Noho Theatre Group (1982) and the Traditional Theatre Training (TTT) program (1984) in Kyoto, together with kyōgen actor Shigeyama Akira. Salz was the editor-in-chief of A History of Japanese Theatre (Cambridge UP 2016); has written and published extensively on Samuel Beckett, intercultural theatre, contemporary kyōgen, and actor training; as well as translated traditional and newly written (shinsaku) works for the page and stage. He has been a member of the Faculty of International Studies at Ryukoku University in Kyoto since 1996, where he teaches comparative theatre and film. For the past four decades he has been an indispensable intermediary for innumerable scholars, artists, and graduate students from all over the world conducting research in Japan.