Contemporary Theatre of the Universal Standard: Tadashi Suzuki in Toga

The Symposium is organised around the Suzuki Company of Toga's (SCOT) theatrical work of nearly 50 years, with a particular emphasis on the Suzuki Method of Actor Training (SMAT), to investigate how and why the SCOT has created a universal standard for contemporary theatre, of which the Theatre Olympics is a manifest illustration.

The Symposium will consist of three parts:

- First, Professor Ted Motohashi of Tokyo University of Economics, the incumbent President of the Japan Section of the International Association of Theatre Critics, will present Tadashi Suzuki's social and political vision, which culminated in his foundation of SCOT in 1976 in the remote village of Toga in northern Japan. Professor Ted Motohashi will present video excerpts from SCOT’s representative staging in Toga.

- Sebastian Mattia Giorgetti, Associate Director of the International Suzuki Company of Toga (ISCOT), will then describe his decades-long experiences in Toga cooperating with the company, and the theoretical background of the Suzuki Method of Actor Training.

The event will continue with Viktor Gábor Kozma, Assistant Professor at Babeş-Bolyai University and Co-Artistic Director of The Chance of the Hunter, presenting the basic SMAT exercises with a few company members to illustrate how and why SMAT is so central to Tadashi Suzuki's theatrical vision. The Demonstration will emphasise that Suzuki's method was not only intended to restore the integrity of the 2,500-year-old Eastern and Western theatrical tradition, but also to revolutionise the realism that has become the standard in global theatre culture since the late 19th century.

(24 March 2023)