Performances

Human Pavilion - A Comedy

• Illustration: Kogani Oshiro

Profile

• Formed 2020 in Okinawa, Japan. Based in Okinawa, Japan.

In 1978, Chinen Seishin (1941-2013) became the first Okinawa-born playwright to win the Kishida Prize for Drama for his work Human Pavilion. To carry on the spirit of the original work, Akane Chinen, daughter of the playwright, launched the AKN Project in 2020. In 2025, the 80th year since the end of World War II, the project will newly stage Human Pavilion specifically as a comedy, with an approach adapted to the present day.
First performed in 1976, Human Pavilion is a milestone play that bitterly satirizes the history of Okinawa, beginning with the Human Pavilion Incident and interweaving Japanization education, the Battle of Okinawa, rule by the US military, and “reversion” to Japan. AKN Project is now taking up this work because its members believe that its possibilities have not yet been exhausted and it still has much to say to the current generation. Recalling the role-playing games and sudden reversals that Seishin loved, the group added, “If theater has power, it is when it shows the possibility that our little role-playing can induce a sudden turnabout in the relationship between strength and weakness, apathy and pain, the inside and outside of the gate, and the center and fringes of a nation.”
Chinen Akane is taking up the challenge of the second re-creation of this work together with the Naha Cultural Arts Theater NAHArt. The performance will have the participation of Hayashi Tatsuki from NAHart as dramaturge, Arakaki Nana as a collaborating director, and Sasaki Ayami as scenographer. For this re-creation, Chinen is endeavoring to daringly present Human Pavilion as a comedy.

Selected performances

2022

“Human Pavillion – A Comedy,” Naha Cultural Arts Theater NAHArt (Okinawa, Japan)

2021

“Human Pavillion – A Comedy,” Online Streaming