Editor’s Note
Samuel L. Leiter, p. iii
PLAY
The Three Hagi Sisters: A Modern Japanese Play by Nagai Ai
Translated and introduced by Loren Edelson, 1
Over the past decade, Nagai Ai has become one of Japan’s most beloved and respected playwrights. Her award-winning play The Three Hagi Sisters, first produced in November 2000, won critical and popular acclaim for its humorous depiction of relations between the sexes and its playful satire of academics using their bedroom frustrations as material for gender research. Nagai’s theatrical portrayal of three Japanese sisters living in a small town will remind readers of Chekhov’s Three Sisters while departing in an entirely new direction.
Loren Edelson is a doctoral candidate in the Ph.D. Theatre Program at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. A recipient of a Japan Foundation fellowship, she is currently doing fieldwork in Japan for her dissertation.
BOOK REVIEWS
Brian Powell, Japan’s Modern Theatre: A Century of Continuity and Change
reviewed by John K. Gillespie, 99
Lesley Downer, Madame Sadayakko: The Geisha Who Seduced the West
reviewed by M. Cody Poulton, 102
Etsuko Terasaki, Figures of Desire: Wordplay, Spirit Possession, Fantasy, Madness, and Mourning in Japanese Noh Plays
reviewed by Stanca Scholz-Cionca, 104
Jan Mrázek, ed., Puppet Theater in Contemporary Indonesia: New Approaches to Performance Events; Poh Sim Plowright, Mediums, Puppets, and the Human Actor in the Theatres of the East
reviewed by Cobina Gillitt, 109
Karen Shimakawa, National Abjection: The Asian American Body Onstage
reviewed by Claire Conceison, 112
PERFORMANCE REVIEW
Ninagawa Yukio, director, Pericles, Prince of Tyre
reviewed by Carol Fisher Sorgenfrei, 116