Kei Ando (安藤奎) | Kishida Prize-Winning Playwright Guide

Introduction

Kei Ando (安藤奎) is among the newest Japanese playwrights to receive the Kishida Kunio Drama Award. She won the 69th award in 2025 for You'll Hit a Stick Even Without Walking (歩かなくても棒に当たる), sharing it with Izumi Kasagi, who won for Umi made 100-nen (海まで100年). Ando writes and directs for her own company, Gekidan Ampersand (劇団アンパサンド).

The title of her award-winning play plays on the Japanese proverb "Even a dog, if it walks, will bump into a stick" (犬も歩けば棒に当たる). Taken literally, Ando's version says you can run into the stick without walking at all. The English title used here is a literal rendering of the Japanese.

Early Life and Career

Ando spent part of her childhood in Kyushu, where her family moved after her parents started a mandarin orange farm. She founded Gekidan Ampersand in 2016, and she also appears in some of its productions.

In a 2025 interview, she named three theater makers as influences: Shiro Maeda of Gotanda-dan, Junya Kamata of Nakagoo, and Kenji Yamauchi of Shiroyagi no Kai. She said she has absorbed the most from novels, naming Ryu Murakami, Haruki Murakami, and Amy Yamada.

Her company's largest production up to that time, Chijo no Hone (地上の骨, 2023), was presented at the Mitaka City Arts Center's Hoshi no Hall as part of its Mitaka "Next" Selection. It tells of a contract employee whose troubles take physical form and change the daily lives of his colleagues, and it includes a character who turns into a fish. The play was a finalist for the 68th Kishida award, which went to Ryo Ikeda's Heartland.

The Kishida Prize-Winning Work

You'll Hit a Stick Even Without Walking won the 69th Kishida Kunio Drama Award in 2025, a year after Chijo no Hone reached the final round. The play was published by Hakusuisha in May 2025.

It is set at the garbage collection point of an apartment building. A woman who strictly policed the garbage rules has died, and the residents begin to grow lax again. One ordinary morning changes when a question arises: has the garbage truck already been? The play's absurd elements include a human-faced growth (人面疽) that starts to move.

Theatrical Style and Philosophy

Ando's work is often described as surreal, and her own comments in the 2025 interview point to several features of how she writes:

Absurd Premises in Everyday Settings: An office and a garbage collection point become sites for a person turning into a fish and a moving human-faced growth.
Opposing Views Without a Verdict: She says she is interested in people with biased opinions or extreme ideas, and she sets conflicting views against one another as equals without deciding who is right.
Distance from Characters: She says she does not write by identifying with her characters but by enjoying the situation they are in, and that she tries to keep personal emotion out of her writing.
Writing for Actors: "Everything starts with the actors," she says, and she has spoken of being embarrassed when she can see a play straining to make people laugh.

Major Works

You'll Hit a Stick Even Without Walking (歩かなくても棒に当たる) - Her Kishida Prize-winning play, set at an apartment building's garbage collection point.
Chijo no Hone (地上の骨, 2023) - A finalist for the 68th Kishida Kunio Drama Award, set in a company office.

How to Experience Their Work

Gekidan Ampersand's productions are staged in Japan. In September 2026, a screening of You'll Hit a Stick Even Without Walking with a talk by Ando was held in Tsu, Mie Prefecture, ahead of a new production at the Mie Center for the Arts.

For those interested in discovering Japanese theatrical scripts and the playwrights who create them, visit our script library to explore works across many styles and subjects.