Suzuki Company will perform in Hartshorn

Famed international director Tadashi Suzuki will bring the Suzuki Company of the Shizuoka Performing Arts Center to the University of Delaware for performances Nov. 13-14 in the Professional Theatre Training Program's (PTTP) Hartshorn Theatre.

The performances of Electra on Tuesday, Nov. 13, and Dionysus on Wednesday, Nov. 14, are part of the company's limited 2001 North American tour, with additional stops scheduled in New York, Pittsburgh, Iowa City and Berkeley, Calif.

The performances will be in Japanese with simultaneous translation into English. The evocative performance style of the Suzuki Company emphasizes sounds, movement and emotion over language and has been critically acclaimed around the world.

The tour is organized by the Japan Society of New York, and the UD performance is sponsored by the PTTP.

Suzuki is the founder and director of the Suzuki Company of Toga, chairperson of the Japan Performing Arts Foundation, artistic director of the Shizuoka Performing Arts Center and creator of the Suzuki method of actor training.

The method is a system of exercises performed to realize Suzuki's belief that humans possess the ability to tap into the expressive power of animal energy and that theatre, as a context for this expression, is socially and spiritually crucial to the modern global situation.

Suzuki has taught his method as an adjunct faculty member in PTTP. A key component of the theatre program is its commitment to provide students access to the best theatrical practices and artistry from all over the world.

Sanford Robbins, PTTP founder and program director, first introduced Suzuki's work to the United States in 1979. A joint PTTP-Suzuki company production of The Bacchae was performed at New York's Café La Mama in 1980 to outstanding reviews. Suzuki's work has been enormously influential throughout the theatre world.

In his production of the ancient Greek drama Electra, based on the text by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Suzuki takes the view that "all the world is a hospital and all men and women are inmates."

The title character is no exception, living speechless and in solitude and plotting revenge on the cause of her suffering–her mother who abandoned her. The aspiration becomes a dark fantasy because of its sheer impossibility.

Suzuki said he believes the spiritual destitution a patient undergoes in a hospital is universal and that no human creature is immune from the risk of living a similarly maddening life.

In Dionysus, Suzuki explores the duality of human life in the exuberance of communal unity and the spirit of alienated individuality. Both sides of this dichotomy are presented on stage simultaneously, providing for a dramatic coexistence of opposites.

Robbins said he anticipates that audiences will be "powerfully gripped by the intensity, beauty and power of Suzuki's remarkable productions."

Tickets for each performance are $25 for the general public and $20 for University faculty, staff and students. Cost to patrons who purchase tickets along with a PTTP subscription series is $17.

For tickets and additional information, call the Hartshorn Theatre box office at 831-2204, from noon to 5 p.m., weekdays.

The Japan Society Performing Arts Program brings the best of Japan's legendary and contemporary performing arts to the United States. It also commissions new works, organizes national tours and develops and distributes educational materials to provide audiences a deeper understanding of the richness and vitality of Japanese performance, past and present.