Training at the Waseda Little Theatre: The Suzuki Method

Extract

During the past dozen years or so a number of contemporary theatre groups in Tokyo have been exploring, each in their own way, new and intensely theatrical approaches in the actor's art. Each group bases its work on ensemble playing, so that in the midst of the exploration, some consistency of performance style has seemed desirable. In either formal or informal ways, this usually means an actor training system created out of the group and designed for its own needs. A training system that is especially Japanese is the one developed by Tadashi Suzuki with members of the acting company of the Waseda Little Theatre (Waseda Shogekijo see T60, T65).

Suzuki formed the Waseda Little Theatre in 1965. Among the twenty members of the acting company today, seven are part of that original group. They gather four nights a week, after working at other jobs, to train under Suzuki's direction. Suzuki, with the actors, has created a series of training disciplines, combining voice and body, which, while being flexible and capable of variation, are precise in their structure.