Yukio Shiba (柴幸男): Time, Repetition, and a Planet in a Family Home

Introduction

How do you fit the life of a planet into a single theatrical performance? For Yukio Shiba (柴幸男), that question became the basis of a Kishida Prize-winning play that sets the life of an ordinary family against the birth and death of the Earth.

Shiba won the 54th Kishida Kunio Drama Award in 2010 for Our Planet (わが星, Waga Hoshi). The company he leads calls the play a rap musical about a girl's life and a star's life, played to the sound of a time signal.

Early Life and Career

Born in 1982 in Aichi Prefecture, Yukio Shiba is the leader of the theater company Mamagoto (ままごと, literally "playing house"), which was formed around him. He is also a member of the directing department of Seinendan (青年団) and teaches at Tama Art University.

His early recognition came in 2004, when his play Dodomino (ドドミノ) won the grand prize at the 2nd Sendai Geki no Machi Playwriting Award.

The Kishida Prize-Winning Work

Our Planet (わが星) -- 54th Kishida Kunio Drama Award, 2010

Our Planet premiered in 2009. A page from Waseda University's Drama-kan Theater summarizes it as setting the roughly 100 years of a human life against the roughly 10 billion years of a star's life, overlapping a family living in a housing complex with the life cycle of a star, all cued by a time signal. The Japan Society's page for its 2012 New York reading says it juxtaposes "the minutia of an average Japanese family's life" with "the galactic events of the Earth's birth and death," and that it was inspired by Thornton Wilder's Our Town.

The published comments from the prize committee show how the play works and how it divided the judges. Akio Miyazawa pointed to its repetition with subtle differences, its use of hip-hop methods, and its use of music by the breakbeat unit □□□ (Kuchiroro). Hideki Noda noted its use of rhyme and rap to shift language. Ryo Iwamatsu praised its repeated, gradually shifting scenes.

Not everyone was convinced. Shoji Kokami wondered whether the play's emotional power was largely borrowed from Our Town, and Ai Nagai found the characters' conversation flat while acknowledging the play's poetic quality.

The script runs about 90 minutes with a cast of eight, according to Mamagoto's script release page.

Theatrical Style and Philosophy

Several features recur in the work we could verify:

Repetition: Our Planet was praised for this. Ayumi (あゆみ) also repeats moments from daily life, according to a review on artscape, and Hanpuku katsu Renzoku (反復かつ連続, roughly "Repetition and Continuity") is a 15-minute solo piece that layers a family's breakfast one member at a time.
Shared roles: In Ayumi, one woman's life is performed by multiple actors.
The cosmic and the everyday: Our Planet places a family home in the frame of a star's life.
Work made for a place: Mamagoto makes work for theaters and, in recent years, through residencies in different places. It describes this as theater that could only be made at that time, in that place, with those people.

Major Works

Years follow Mamagoto's script release page and Shiba's profile, which do not always agree for early works.

Dodomino (ドドミノ, 2004) -- Winner of the Sendai Geki no Machi Playwriting Award.
Hanpuku katsu Renzoku (反復かつ連続) -- A solo play.
Ayumi (あゆみ) -- Available in short and long versions.
Our Planet (わが星, 2009) -- His Kishida Prize-winning play.
Nihon no Otona (日本の大人, 2013) -- Presented at the Aichi Triennale.
Minato no Gekijo (港の劇場, 2013) -- Presented at the Setouchi Triennale.
Watashi no Hoshi (わたしの星, 2014) -- Staged again in Osaka in 2019.
Atarashii Kenpo no Hanashi (あたらしい憲法のはなし, 2015).

Legacy and Influence

International interest: Japan Society presented an English reading of Our Planet in New York on February 6, 2012, in a translation by Katsunori and Miharu Obata, directed by Alec Duffy. Shiba's profile also lists Wo de Xingqiu (我的星球), staged in Tainan in 2018.
Open scripts: Mamagoto has been releasing Shiba's scripts on a trial basis since 2014, which makes his work unusually easy to read.

How to Experience His Work

Mamagoto offers Our Planet as a free PDF in Japanese through its script release project. You can also explore a wider range of Japanese drama on our script search page.

Yukio Shiba (柴幸男) | Kishida Prize-Winning Playwright Guide