Noda Hideki’s The Bee and Being Transnational/Intranational

Abstract

This chapter discusses the Japanese leading playwright/director/actor Noda Hideki’s play of the macabre, The Bee. The play was co-written by Noda Hideki and the Irish playwright Colin Teevan inspired by the Japanese novelist Tsutsui Yasutaka’s short story. Its English version was premiered at Soho Theatre, London in 2006 by Noda with British actors, and the all-Japanese cast version at Theatre Tram, Tokyo in 2007. In 2012, the play made a world tour including New York City, London, Hong Kong and Tokyo. Noda, now known as intercultural performance facilitator in Japan, began his intercultural collaboration in the Japanese version of The Red Demon in 1996, performing with the British Actor Angus Barnette in the role of the Red Demon. Noda went a step ahead of the older style of interculturalization, not just becoming borderless by theatre but examining memories, history and the cruelty of human beings using the light, playful and fast-paced theatrical style, atypical of Japanese theatre. The chapter investigates how Noda uses a globalized technique of interculturalization to explore transnational issues by repeating the production of his plays in multiple locations both in Japan and in the world and questions why his play still preserves the “very Japanese” elements as described by the audiences overseas.