Sayaka Murata + Shu Matsui inseparable Premiere “Kawarimi”

Sayaka Murata

Original idea

Born in Chiba Prefecture in 1979, Sayaka Murata graduated from Tamagawa University with a degree in arts and culture studies. She won the Gunzo Prize for New Writers in 2003 for “Breastfeeding,” followed by the Noma Literary New Face Prize for “Silver Song” in 2009, the Mishima Yukio Prize in 2013 for “Of Bones, Of Body Heat, of Whitening City,” and the Akutagawa Prize for “Convenience Store Women” (in Japanese, “Convenience Store Person”) in 2016. The latter sold over 920,000 copies. Her other books include “Mouse,” “Water for the Stars,” “Ark,” “The Now Door,” “Killer Birth,” and “Dwindling World.”

Shu Matsui

Original idea, script, director

Born in Tokyo in 1972, Shu Matsui joined Seinendan in 1996 as an actor and later started working with the company as a writer and director. In 2007, he launched his company, Sample, with “Burning Up Calories” and left Seinendan. Portraying people as wandering with a map of only their own divided selves, Matsui is distrustful of the lines between all relationships, from reality and fiction to objects and people, male and female, and actor and audience, and in his work he endeavors to transcend and intermix these divisions. He won the 55th Kishida Kunio Drama Award for “Proud Son” in 2011. “Takeoff” was performed at the 2016 Kuandu Arts Festival in Taiwan, while “Proud Son” was revived at the Festival d’Automne à Paris in 2018.