Rescaling the Private: Extimate miniaturization in the theatre of Niwa Gekidan Penino

Abstract

This article explores the dramaturgy of electrifying Japanese contemporary theatre maker Tanino Kurō and his company's inventive architectures of rescaled private worlds. Tanino is a major figure in contemporary Japanese theatre, his work tours internationally, and he is well-discussed in Japanese theatre criticism. This essay introduces some notable dramaturgical features of Tanino's theatre for the first time in English. Further, the article theorizes that Tanino's innovative stage architectures disfigure the usual optics of the private sphere and, consequently, its preferred subjects, from the family patriarch to repression. This article offers a new way to understand the angura influence on contemporary Japanese performance cultures and the circumstances of radical theatre in a wider post-1960s neoliberal predicament.