Japan-Britain Contemporary Theatre Exchange project involved the exchange between Japanese and British theatre students, academics and theatre-makers through workshops, roundtable talks and lectures at the Lancaster University and the University of Salford in November 2023. This was a pilot project aiming to create a long-term network between Japanese and British theatre scholars and practitioners.

This initial phase included a collaboration with the award-winning Japanese director Yuta Hagiwara (Kamome Machine Theatre company) and Professor Tadashi Uchino (University of Tokyo and Gakushuin Women’s College), one of the leading authorities on contemporary Japanese theatre. Director Hagiwara will lead two workshops with students of theatre studies in the North-West England, based on his method of ‘experiments in sharing thoughts through the body’. Professor Uchino (Gakushuin Women’s College) gave a lecture on current trends in contemporary Japanese theatre. Additional events took place at the New Adelphi Studio at University of Salford.

This project was organised through Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts (LICA) Cultures Research Centre. It was jointly organised by Dr Karen Jürs-Munby, Senior Lecturer in Theatre (Lancaster University), Beri Juraic, PhD Candidate in Theatre Studies (Lancaster University) and Dr Richard Talbot, Senior Lecturer in Performance (University of Salford) with the additional support by Meg Ritchie (Postgraduate Researcher in Media and Cultural Studies, Lancaster University).