Some Forgotten Dreams
Omoidasenai Yume no Ikutsuka
1994
1 hr.
3 characters
(1 male / 2 female)
Some Forgotten Dreams Tokyo Notes Transfer Student A Burning House, or Shambles? A Hard Life to Accept Kings of the Road The Dancer The Balkan Zoo The Little Match Girls 'Cause the Moon is So Bright Tonight
Some Forgotten DreamsOmoidasenai Yume no Ikutsuka 1994 1 hr. 3 characters (1 male / 2 female) |
SynopsisThrough their conversations on a train, a singer past her prime, her young attendant, and the singer's agent hint at a subtle and touching love triangle in this piece. Under the starry sky, the train somehow seems to be headed for somewhere out of this world. They know each other's painful past but make no mention of it. They just go on talking nonchalantly. |
TranslationsFrench translation |
Tokyo Notes Tokyo Note 1994 1 hr. 30 min. 20 characters (9 male / 11 female) |
SynopsisAn assortment of people visit this small art museum in Tokyo in 2004 to see the paintings evacuated from war-torn Europe. Focusing on their various concerns (family, job, war, art, etc.) this play constructs a whole world of its own, just like a picture made from mosaic tiles.This piece, whose title pays homage to a masterpiece by filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu, "Tokyo Story (Tokyo Monogatari)," is one of the most renowned works of Oriza Hirata and has been presented not only in Japan but also in Europe, North America, and Korea. In 1995 Hirata won the Kishida Kunio Drama Award with this piece. |
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Transfer Student Tenkosei 1994 1 hr. 21 characters (0 male / 21 female) |
SynopsisThis absurd drama for high school girls, based on Kafka's "Die Verwandlung (The Metamorphosis)," was created to be presented by the 21 girls chosen through auditions in the fall of 1994.A young woman wakes one morning to find she has been transferred to a new school. She is eventually accepted by her new classmates. |
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A Burning House, or Shambles? Kataku ka Shura ka 1995 1 hr. 30 min. 20 characters (8 male / 12 female) |
SynopsisThis is Hirata's version of "Grand Hotel" depicting several groups of guests at an old Japanese inn one day.A middle-aged novelist has long been staying at this inn. His three daughters, living away from him at home, come and visit their father after finding out that he is getting remarried. The subtle wavers in their minds caused by this plan are minutely delineated in this piece. |
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A Hard Life to Accept Kono Sei wa Ukeiregatashi 1996 1 hr. 5 characters (3 male / 2 female) |
SynopsisA spin-off of the Science Series portraying a scientist and his wife who have recently moved from Tokyo to a suburban community in northeastern Japan. She cannot get used to the life there, nor can she help feeling uncomfortable with parasitology, her husband's specialty.By depicting the slightly odd but loving scientists devoted to parasitology, this piece examines what it is to be married. |
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Kings of the Road Bouken Ou 1996 1 hr. 30 min. 18 characters (12 male / 6 female) |
SynopsisThis piece is set in the dormitory of a cheap hotel in Istanbul in 1980, where a group of Japanese backpackers hang out, detained there by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the seizure by students of the American Embassy in Teheran.The ordinary and extraordinary lives of these young backpackers, after weeks and months of roaming, have grown indifferent and numb. This is an autobiographical piece of Oriza Hirata based on his experiences travelling around the world when he was 16. |
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The Dancer Odoriko 1996 1 hr. 40 min. 21 characters (11 male / 10 female) |
SynopsisSet in a small hotel in an Izu resort, this piece depicts both the fragile love between the hotel owner and a part-time worker and the subtle interactions among a group of people facing old age. |
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The Balkan Zoo Balkan Dobutsuen 1997 1 hr. 40 min. 21 characters (7 male / 14 female) |
SynopsisThis piece, the third of the Science Series, is set in a science lab in 2010. The big issue here is whether or not to allow the brain of an Islamic scientist who has become a vegetable, injured in a major war in Europe, to be brought into their lab.Massive scientific discussions and the everyday lives of the young scientists are keenly balanced in this piece that asks the questions: what is humanity and what is it that distinguishes oneself from others? |
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The Little Match Girls Match Uri no Shojotachi 1997 1 hr. 40 min. 10 characters (4 male / 6 female) |
SynopsisBased on the early works of Minoru Betsuyaku, one of the most renowned Japanese playwrights of absurd drama, this absurd comedy depicts the little match girls who come to visit a middle-aged couple, one by one, claiming "I am your daughter," and do not go back. Housewives in the neighborhood and weird municipal officers also get involved as the story rolls on. |
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'Cause the Moon is So Bright Tonight Tsuki ga Tottemo Aoikara 1997 1 hr. 30 min. 11 characters (5 male / 6 female) |
SynopsisHirata wrote this piece to be presented by Bungakuza, one of the oldest theater groups in Japan.An old man in a venerable family dies in the Tokyo suburbs. After the wake his family are in the living room, talking nonchalantly about the cost of the funeral service and what not. A couple of mourners arrive late and reveal that the deceased had been actively involved in the study of UFO, which he had kept secret from his family. And now the commotion begins. The sadness of a generation of Japanese people baffled by rapid post-war growth is depicted in this situation-comedy type setting, a style which is not very common for Oriza Hirata. |
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