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Shiki Theatre Company is one of Japan's best-known and largest theatre companies. Shiki Theatre Company employs over 800 actors and staff and stages about 3000 performances a year.
Shiki Theatre Company operates nine theatres for their exclusive use. Originally, they staged classic plays by Jean Anouilh or Jean Giraudoux. However, in the late 1970s, they found success by staging western musicals and plays.
Shiki is also known for producing original language musicals. One such example is the Showa Trilogy, a set of three musicals about WWII and the aftermath. The series consists of Ri Kōran, a musical about the famous Manchurian-Japanese singer; Foreign Hill which tells the story of Japanese prisoners of war at an internment camp in Siberia; and Southern Cross about the trials of innocent B and C-class war criminals in Indonesia.
Shiki Theatre Company established in 1953 by Keita Asari, and his company was created as a stock holding company in 1967.
July 2005 marked the 52nd anniversary of Shiki Theatre Company. Now, with eight home theatres throughout Japan, they have over 3,000 performances per year, an average of 8 performances per day.
When the company was founded, there were a very limited number of theatre-goers in Japan, although Japan has a variety of traditional performing arts. Shiki Theatre Company made steady efforts to retrieve theatre in the Japanese life, avoiding the cultural centralisation.
They also undertake a variety of projects to promote cultural exchange with foreign countries. These projects include not only performing their productions abroad but also exchanging personal and intellectual resources with other theatrical groups abroad and having foreign actors and technical staff for training.
Shiki Theatre Company consists of more than 1,000 people -—actors, technical and management staff.
Here are few videos reflect some of their work.