About the Matsumoto Performing Arts Centre

Overview & History
The Matsumoto Performing Arts Centre (MPAC) is a cultural facility with three main performancehalls: the Large Hall, a convertible hall that can seat 750 to 1,800 guests; the Small Hall with 288
seats; and the Experimental Theater, with 360 seats. The MPAC is not only equipped to serve as avenue for state-of-the-art performing arts, but it is also well suited for different types of functions,such as conventions and other events.
As a new hub for the arts in Matsumoto, in addition to offering the chance to appreciate a diverse
array of performing arts, the MPAC supports the thriving culture and art activities of local citizens
and facilitates conversation, exchange, and cultural richness in the community.

Name

Matsumoto Performing Arts CentreAddress

3-10-1 Fukashi, Matsumoto, Nagano, 390-0815

Contact

E-Mail mpac@mpac.jp

ClosedOpen year-round (may periodically close for maintenance)

Hours

8:30 a.m. to 10:00 p.m.

Administrative organization

Matsumoto Arts and Culture Promotion Foundation

Site area 8,995.76m2
Area

Building area 7,080.02m2
Total floor area 19,184.37m2

Combined steel and reinforced concrete structure
Building structure

Steel frame or reinforced concrete structure in some areas
Seven, above-ground floors and two, below-ground floors

DesignYear opened

Toyo Ito & Associates, Architects

2004

The Performing Arts Centre’s Community Activities
The Matsumoto Performing Arts Centre leads a variety of community-based activities incollaboration with local citizens. Working together cooperatively to create works put forth by theCentre, these efforts are experiments that help support and further cultivate the MPAC, and evenenergize Matsumoto itself.

Matsumoto Theater Factory
The Matsumoto Theater Factory is the product of Artistic Director Kazuyoshi Kushida’s
dream of creating a theater school. Using the Performing Arts Centre as a base, the concept
is to allow the local people to seek out a theater of their very own and build it their very
own style. Theater members are those who have passed an audition, regardless of having
formal theater experience or not. They participate in a series of workshops, continuously
rehearse for the performance, and along with teachers and experts from a multitude oftheatrical genres, the members share the entire theatrical production process including theact of performing the play. This process brings a unique, personal theatrical expression tolife through the thoughts, actions, and imaginations of every single person involved.
Shinshu Matsumoto Kabuki
Starting with their Kabuki play, Natsumatsuri Naniwa Kagami, in 2008, and the subsequent
Sakura Giminden (2010), Tennichibo (2012), Sannin Kichisa (2014), and Yotsuya Kaidan(2016), the Shinshu Matsumoto Kabuki has become a popular staple of Matsumoto’s
summer art scene. The project developed out of the Bunkamura Theatre Cocoon’s “CocoonKabuki” production in Tokyo, which was created by Artistic Director Kazuyoshi Kushida andthe late Kanzaburo Nakamura as they sought to reimagine kabuki in the style ofcontemporary drama.

Much more than simply moving Cocoon Kabuki to Matsumoto, Shinshu Matsumoto Kabuki
gives a local Matsumoto cast (or, for Tennichibo, a local musical ensemble) of men andwomen of all ages the opportunity to actually perform alongside professional kabuki actors.
Furthermore, the kabuki production gets the entire city of Matsumoto involved and excited,with local resident volunteers doing various kind of support work, such as showing guests totheir seats, selling souvenirs, backstage catering, and providing soba noodle service.
Daidogei (Street Performance) Festival in Matsumoto
Together with the Shinshu Matsumoto Kabuki event, the Daidogei Festival was held for the
first time on Matsumoto Performing Arts Centre’s fifth anniversary in 2009 and has been
held every other year since. During this citywide event, visitors young and old can walkaround Matsumoto enjoying numerous delightful shows by professional street performers.
There are also a variety of other related events that take place, and with the cooperation oflocal businesses and the support of Matsumoto residents who help with preparations andfestival operations, the Daidogei Festival is a one-of-a-kind collaborative event that can only
be found in Matsumoto.

Greeting from the Artistic Director“Time, wisdom, and effort” multiplied by “understanding, expectation, and collaboration”:
Transforming Matsumoto into a hub for cultural transmission
Greetings! This year in 2013, the Matsumoto Performing Arts Centre will be celebrating its 10thyear anniversary. Time certainly goes by quickly. It feels like it was just the other day when weopened. Still, to me, it also feels like it could have been ages ago, too!

I was asked to come in April of 2003, one year before the building was finished. The official
completion ceremony was then held on March 3, 2004, just one week after the newly-electedmayor of Matsumoto took office.
That year was one filled with brand new experiences for me. As you all know well, there were many
who opposed the construction of the Performing Arts Centre. I had just come to Matsumoto and I
spent a lot of time speaking to those people. I also attended the city council meeting and had toanswer all kinds of questions.
There were many occasions when I felt the people were being irrational. Yet, strangely enough, I
began to sense a sort of positive, optimistic premonition inside myself. It was the kind of feelingthat defies any logical explanation—it was as if I felt something coming in the wind. How could I, asa person who had spent a lifetime in theater, ignore this feeling, this blowing wind?
I wrote above that “you all know well” how the situation was back then, but in reality ten years ago,
there must be people who were still children at that time and do not remember. There must also
be many people who did not come to Matsumoto until later, as well. And perhaps, there are evensome who would prefer to forget what went on in the past. Still, I think the memory of that roughtime is a very important thing for us. Now, Matsumoto and the Performing Arts Centre can greet
the year of our 10th anniversary with confidence, which I believe is thanks to the force of that“wind” I had felt ten years ago—and still feel to this day.
Construction was completed on March 3, 2004, but the Performing Arts Centre did not open as atheater until August 29, after all the preparations for opening were finished. So, I would say theCentre’s official “birthday” is August 29. Because Matsumoto is always right in the middle of its
Saito Kinen Festival (now called the Seiji Ozawa Matsumoto Festival) in August, I barely have time
to remember our birthday amidst all hubbub, but on that very first day ten years ago, we hosted
the first showing of the Wozzeck opera in the Large Hall at the same time as the first showing of

Scapin (a play that I directed myself) in the Small Hall. The Theater Park was transformed into abewildering jumble of the very formally dressed Wozzeck viewers and the young audience ofScapin. Seeing this, I thought to myself, this is exactly the kind of theater I hoped we wouldbecome.
2013 Ten Year Anniversary Program
We have done a lot since then, but since I do not have the luxury of time to look back overeverything, instead, I will talk about our upcoming plans and vision for the future of the Performing
Arts Centre.
First off, in June, we will be presenting the play Tsuki To Taiyo To Dorobo To (The Moon, the Sun,and the Thief) as part of the World Children’s Literature Discovery Project in Matsumoto. Actually,
the script is based on one that I wrote when I was 19 years old and had performed only once onstage. An old friend from high school brought me the script a few years back, asking if I
remembered it.
The script had been handwritten and copied with a mimeograph on coarse paper and had turnedbrown over the years. My friend had carefully bound the script, as-is, into a book. I had written it 50years ago! Reading over the script, I realized that I had not changed one bit, which made me feelstrangely pathetic, yet happy all at the same. When I showed it to Tadashi Kato who was in chargeof direction, he immediately said, “Let’s do this!” Feeling both embarrassed and delighted, how
could I say no?
In July, it is time for the 2013 version of the Kuchu Cabaret (Sky Cabaret). The Kuchu Cabaret of2011 had been more popular than I had imagined, but its success cannot only be credited to myself,
or even the performers and the staff. Rather, it was the viewers from Matsumoto who had
gathered around the stage and their receptiveness that created an extraordinary and wondrous
atmosphere that permeated through the entire theater.

Even the guests who came from outside of Matsumoto were so impressed that they raved about
the show across Twitter and other social media platforms. As we plan to build up the Kuchu Cabaret
further, I hope it will become the center of our summer festival.
Then comes August and the performance of Stravinsky’s L’Histoire du soldat (The Soldier’s Tale) at
the Saito Kinen Festival that began the year before last. Until now, the play was directed by French
director Laurent Lévy, but this year I will be directing it in a brand new way. Please look forward towatching L’Histoire du soldat this year, as well, whether you have already seen it or not.
In October, we will be showing our original opening show, Scapin, for the first time in nine years. In
staying true to our original intentions, it will be a pleasure to have our Matsumoto guests onceagain watch Scapin after nine years, and for myself to perform in the play again after nine years.
In December, the Matsumoto City Opera will be presenting Carmen. The year before last, DieZauberflöte (The Magic Flute) directed by Akira Shirai turned out to be a fantastic performance thatshowed us just how talented the Matsumoto City Opera was. When I saw that performance, I was
so happy to see that our city opera was not simply imitating others; rather, the opera now had its
very own unique Matsumoto-flavored style thanks to the local members that make up the group.
Once we move into 2014, in March, we will be presenting a very, very important work that I, too,feel is a critical piece to show. Please wait just a little bit longer until we announce what theperformance will be.
Later that March, we will also present Matsumoto Theater Factory’s newest performance, a playcreated by local residents of Matsumoto. The Theater Factory is a project that I had strongly been
considering ever since I took over as artistic director, but it has finally started to take off recently.
It is my hope that the project will continue to develop more and more to become an innovative
theatrical school that will be one of its kind in Japan. That is, a place where all kinds of people—

from actors and actresses aiming to become professionals, to free-minded and creative amateurs,
as well as all the diverse types of people seeking to learn something through theater—can inspire,motivate, and learn from each other.
Planning Matsumoto’s Summer Culture Festival
Another plan encompassed in our vision for the future is a cultural festival. I have always thought itwould wonderful to have a festival like the theater festival in France’s Avignon, a city located in thesouthern region of Provence; or the Edinburgh Festival in Scotland. In places like these, although
the festivals are relatively small, being held in charismatic, culturally flourishing towns, they are richand lively events that garner the attention of everyone around.
The festival held in the town of Sibiu, Romania, which once presented kabuki theater, is now one of
the most famous in all of Europe. The population of Sibiu is just about the same as Matsumoto’s,
but economically speaking, Romania is much poorer than Japan. Despite this fact, Sibiu isremarkable in the way that it culturally conveys and expresses itself, giving hope to and inspiring its
citizens throughout the country.
Still, we have to remember that in Japan and other countries, the circumstances differ greatly on
many levels, so simply trying to imitate someone else’s festival will not prove successful. Japan
must do it in its own Japanese way, and Matsumoto in its own Matsumoto-esque style: We must
hold our own dreams and aspirations and devise our own unique way of doing things. This in itself
is what “culture” entails.
The Saito Kinen Festival, developed over many years by Seiji Ozawa; the Shinshu MatsumotoKabuki, where Kanzaburo Nakamura devoted himself to fascinate the audience; the Daidogei(Street Performance) Festival, the Kuchu Cabaret, and the other new cultural forces born right here
in Matsumoto—My vision for a culture festival is one in which all of these, along with a diverse
array of people coming from a diverse array of places, are combined into one whole.

Let me also mention another important thing: TC Alp, Matsumoto’s professional theater company.
It has been about five years since TC Alp was formed, with its first members consisting of the young
participants of one of my theater camps (I had been holding in mainly Hokkaido but they joined
when they heard it was coming to Matsumoto), Nihon University’s College of Art alumni who I used
to teach, and young people born and raised in Matsumoto who wanted to become professional
actors and actresses. Now, hearing their story, the members come from all over the place.
The TC Alp company practices here in Matsumoto, believing strongly in the new possibilities of
producing theater in the city. They must become a theater company of original and charismatic
expression that the citizens of Matsumoto will love and feel pride in, because it is they (of course, I
myself a member as well) who, through theater, will have to become leaders of culture ofMatsumoto. The Matsumoto Theater Factory, TC Alp, and a cultural festival: these are the threepillars that form the foundation of the Matsumoto Performing Arts Centre’s vision for the future,
welcoming in our tenth year of operation.
Lastly, I would like the space in the Performing Arts Centre to become more of place that everyone
can use freely for communication and exchange. Also, I would like to make the so-called Theater
Park (the wide-open area on the second floor) a place where there is always something going on. It
does not need to be a huge event, but the Theater Park is a “park of theater” after all!
It could be anything—you know, meet new people, make new friends, discover new ideas, havefun, make some noise, tell each other secrets, etc, etc. Along with the Theater Cafe, I would love tomake it a place where sometimes you can go in and change it into a completely different, fun space;a park where everyone gets involved and creates a place of their own making.
There also more and more people who anticipate the publication of our PR Magazine, Maku Ga
Agaru (The Curtain Rises). Perhaps it is going over the top a bit, but we are even talking about
making this website one that you just cannot wait to go check.

We are definitely going to need much more time, wisdom, and effort to get all these things
accomplished! Even more so, we are going to need everyone’s understanding, expectations, andcollaboration. And, never forget how important it is to have a heart that can sense the windblowing, no matter how faint it may be.
Artistic Director, Matsumoto Performing Arts Centre
Kazuyoshi Kushida