is one of Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

's best-known and largest theatre companies. Shiki Theatre Company employs over 800 actors and staff, and stages about 2800 performances a year. Shiki Theatre Company operates nine theaters for their exclusive use. Originally, they staged classic plays by Jean Anouilh

Jean Anouilh

Jean Marie Lucien Pierre Anouilh was a French dramatist whose career spanned five decades. Though his work ranged from high drama to absurdist farce, Anouilh is best known for his 1943 play Antigone, an adaptation of Sophocles' Classical drama, that was seen as an attack on Marshal Pétain's...

 or Jean Giraudoux

Jean Giraudoux

Hippolyte Jean Giraudoux was a French novelist, essayist, diplomat and playwright. He is considered among the most important French dramatists of the period between World War I and World War II. His work is noted for its stylistic elegance and poetic fantasy...

. However, in the late 1970s, they found success by staging western musical

Musical theatre

Musical theatre is a form of theatre combining songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance. The emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an...

s and plays.

Shiki is also known for producing original language musicals. One such example is the Showa

Showa period

The , or Shōwa era, is the period of Japanese history corresponding to the reign of the Shōwa Emperor, Hirohito, from December 25, 1926 through January 7, 1989.The Shōwa period was longer than the reign of any previous Japanese emperor...

 Trilogy, a set of three musicals about WWII and the aftermath. The series consists of Ri Kōran, a musical about the famous Manchuria

Manchuria

Manchuria is a historical name given to a large geographic region in northeast Asia. Depending on the definition of its extent, Manchuria usually falls entirely within the People's Republic of China, or is sometimes divided between China and Russia. The region is commonly referred to as Northeast...

n-Japanese singer; which tells the story of Japanese prisoners of war at an internment camp in Siberia; and about the trials of innocent B and C-class war criminals in Indonesia.

History

Shiki Theatre Company is established in 1953 by Keita Asari (浅利慶太) and his company The organization was established as a stock holding company in 1967.

Performed Works

Shiki Theatre Company has performed a lot of Broadway musicals, including the following.

Original Shows/Adaptations

based on a novel by Jirō Akagawa

Jiro Akagawa

is a Japanese novelist born in Fukuoka, Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan.- Biography :Best known for his humorous mysteries, Akagawa's first novel, Ghost Train, was published in 1976 and went on to win the annually granted All Yomimono New Mystery Writers' Prize by Bungeishunjū, a Japanese literary...

 based on the novel by Miura Tetsuo.

Showa Trilogy

• Ri Koran
• Foreign Hill
• Southern Cross

Children's Theatre

• Anne of Green Gables
  Anne of Green Gables
  Anne of Green Gables is a bestselling novel by Canadian author Lucy Maud Montgomery published in 1908. Set in 1878, it was written as fiction for readers of all ages, but in recent decades has been considered a children's book...
  
  
• Maeterlinck's Blue Bird (Sometimes retitled: Dreaming)
• Lloyd Alexander
  Lloyd Alexander
  Lloyd Chudley Alexander was a widely influential American author of more than forty books, mostly fantasy novels for children and adolescents, as well as several adult books...
  
  's The Cat Who Wished to Be a Man
  The Cat Who Wished to Be a Man
  The Cat Who Wished to Be a Man is a children's comic fantasy novel by Lloyd Alexander.- Plot :Lionel, a housecat given the power of speech by the magician Stephanus, begs his master to turn him into a man. After many objections concerning the depravity of humans, Stephanus relents; and the...
  
  
• The Emperor's New Clothes

Western Shows

• Disney's Aida
  Aida (musical)
  Aida is a musical with music by Elton John, lyrics by Tim Rice, and book by Linda Woolverton, Robert Falls, and David Henry Hwang, and produced by Walt Disney Theatrical....
  
  
• A Chorus Line
  A Chorus Line
  A Chorus Line is a 1975 musical about Broadway dancers auditioning for spots on a chorus line. The book was authored by James Kirkwood, Jr. and Nicholas Dante, lyrics were written by Edward Kleban, and music was composed by Marvin Hamlisch....
  
  
• Contact
  Contact (musical)
  Contact: The Musical is a musical "dance play" that was developed by Susan Stroman and John Weidman, with its "book" by Weidman and both choreography and direction by Stroman. It ran both off-Broadway and on Broadway in 1999 - 2000. It consists of three separate one-act dance...
  
  
• Crazy for You
  Crazy for You
  Crazy for You is a musical with a book by Ken Ludwig, lyrics by Ira Gershwin, and music by George Gershwin. Billed as "The New Gershwin Musical Comedy", it is largely based on the songwriting team’s 1930 musical, Girl Crazy, but interpolates songs from several other productions as well...
  
  
• Equus
  Equus (play)
  Equus is a play by Peter Shaffer written in 1973, telling the story of a psychiatrist who attempts to treat a young man who has a pathological religious fascination with horses....
  
  
• Evita
• Jesus Christ Superstar
  Jesus Christ Superstar
  Jesus Christ Superstar is a rock opera by Andrew Lloyd Webber, with lyrics by Tim Rice. The musical started off as a rock opera concept recording before its first staging on Broadway in 1971...
  
  
• Mamma Mia!
  Mamma Mia!
  Mamma Mia! is a stage musical written by British playwright Catherine Johnson, based on the songs of ABBA, composed by Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus, former members of the band. Although the title of the musical is taken from the group's 1975 chart-topper "Mamma Mia", the plot is fictional, not...
  
  
• Lloyd-Webber's Phantom of the Opera
  The Phantom of the Opera (1986 musical)
  The Phantom of the Opera is a musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber, based on the French novel Le Fantôme de l'Opéra by Gaston Leroux.The music was composed by Lloyd Webber, and most lyrics were written by Charles Hart, with additional lyrics by Richard Stilgoe. Alan Jay Lerner was an early collaborator,...
  
  
• Le Passe Muraille
• Spring Awakening
  Spring Awakening
  Spring Awakening is a rock musical adaptation of the controversial 1892 German play of the same title by Frank Wedekind. It features music by Duncan Sheik and a book and lyrics by Steven Sater. Set in late-19th century Germany, it concerns teenagers who are discovering the inner and outer tumult of...
  
  
• West Side Story
• Wicked
  Wicked (musical)
  Wicked is a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz and a book by Winnie Holzman. It is based on the Gregory Maguire novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West , a parallel novel of the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz and L. Frank Baum's classic story The Wonderful Wizard...
  
  

Family Entertainment

• Disney's Beauty and the Beast
• Cats
  Cats (musical)
  Cats is a musical composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber, based on Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats by T. S. Eliot...
  
  
• Disney's The Lion King
  The Lion King (musical)
  The Lion King is a musical based on the 1994 Disney animated film of the same name with music by Elton John and lyrics by Tim Rice along with the musical score created by Hans Zimmer with choral arrangements by Lebo M. Directed by Julie Taymor, the musical features actors in animal costumes as well...
  
  

External links

• Shiki Theatre Company official website