After the auditions in the form of workshop which took place in Sansepolcro in November 2023, the CRISOL – creative processs project, financed by Boarding Pass Plus / Ministry of Culture and coordinated by Fabbrica Europa, continues in Japan with the creation phase involving the four selected young performers – Alessandra Cozzi, Lara Di Bello, Giorgia F. Fiorentini, Luca Maino – accompanied by the young operator Marta Meroni.

Directed by Takahiro Fujita, playwright, theatre director and founder of mum & gypsy, the four Italian artists will work together with some of the actors of the Japanese company at the Morishita studio in Tokyo for a rehearsal period from August 1 to September 8.
The place / Il posto, the work resulting from this creative process, will premiere at the Toyooka Theatre Festival (September 13-15) and will also be presented in the Kagawa district on September 20-21.

The work is inspired by a news story that occurred in Tokyo in 2020: the murder of a homeless woman, with a past as a theatre actress, by a man who lived near the bench where the woman often stopped. Starting from this episode, Fujita, together with Italian and Japanese performers, intends to create a work focused on vulnerability and violence in contemporary society as well as on the danger and fear linked to the loss of identity.
In the construction of the dramaturgy, excerpts of stories that emerged from the meeting with the actors during the auditions will be intertwined with the narration of personal experiences of the director himself, linked in particular to his period of residency in Sansepolcro, in an apparent fragmentation which will be recomposed at the end of the show.

This co-creation process is promoted by CRISOL partners Capotrave/Kilowatt (Sansepolcro) and mum & gypsy (Japan) with the support of The Saison Foundation.

mum & gypsy is a Japanese theatre company founded in 2007 by playwright and director Takahiro Fujita. In 2011, at the age of 26, Fujita was the youngest winner of the Kishida Kunio Drama Award, one of the most important prizes in the Japanese theatre scene and today is considered one of Japan’s most important playwrights and directors. With mum & gypsy he directed more than 50 productions, involving an audience of over 25,000 spectators. He has collaborated with public theaters such as the Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre and the Saitama Arts Theatre. One of his best-known works – awarded with the Yomiuri Theater Awards – is the stage adaptation of “Cocoon” by manga artist Machiko Kyo. In 2013 he collaborated with internationally renowned writer Mieko Kawakami, with a work performed in 18 cities in Japan. As a playwright he adapted Haruki Murakami’s novel The Wind Up Bird Chronicle (international bestseller with 2.2 million copies sold and translated into 24 languages) for a work by the Israeli choreographer and director Inbal Pinto.

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photo: Cocoon by mum & gypsy, 2022