Tadashi Suzuki
He is the founder and director of the Suzuki Company of Toga (SCOT), and organizer of Japan’s first international theatre festival (Toga Festival). With American director Anne Bogart, he co-founded the Saratoga International Theatre Institute in Saratoga Springs, New York. He is the creator of the "Suzuki Method" of actor training, which emphasizes stylized body work and physicality drawing from dance and elements of traditional Japanese theater. Suzuki was general artistic director of Shizuoka Performing Arts Center (SPAC) (1995~2007), an international committee member of the Theatre Olympics, founding member of the BeSeTo Festival (jointly organized by  leading theatre artists from Japan, China and Korea), and chairman of the Board of Directors for the Japan Performing Arts Foundation, a nationwide network of theatre professionals in Japan. Career. Suzuki became involved in the "Angura" ("underground") theater movement in Japan in the early 1960s, and founded a theater troupe called the Waseda Little Theatre, which focused on the physical talents of star actress Kayoko Shiraishi. It was with the Waseda Little Theatre that Suzuki began to develop his Suzuki Method of actor training. Suzuki's works include "On the Dramatic Passions"”, "The Trojan Women", "Dionysus", "Vision of Lear", "Cyrano  de Bergerac", and "Madame de Sade", among others. Besides productions with his own company, he has directed several international collaborations, such as "The Tale of Lear" (1988), co-produced and presented by four leading regional theatres in the US, many of whose actors had studied with him; "King Lear", presented with the Moscow Art Theatre; "Oedipus Rex", co-produced by Cultural Olympiad and the Düsseldorf Schauspielhaus; and "Electra", produced by Ansan Arts Center / Arco Arts Theatre in Korea and the Taganka Theatre in Russia. He relocated his company from Tokyo to the remote mountain village of Toga in 1976. The  Toga Art Park now comprises six theaters, rehearsal facilities, offices, lodgings, and restaurants. It continues to host a summer and winter season of performances, symposiums, workshops and competitions. Teaching and writing. Suzuki has articulated his theories in a number of books. A collection of his writings in English, "The Way of Acting", is published by Theatre Communications Group (US). He has taught his system of actor training in schools and theatres throughout the world, including The Juilliard School in New York and the Moscow Art Theatre. The Cambridge University Press published "The Theatre of Suzuki Tadashi" as part of their  Directors in Perspective series, featuring leading theatre directors of the 20th century. This series includes works on Meyerhold, Brecht, Strehler, Peter Brook and Robert Wilson among others. Childhood. Suzuki's family practiced gidayu, the musical accompaniment of Banraku. As a student in elementary school, Suzuki would have to sit for an hour to watch his father's singing, which he found rather frightening at the time. During highschool and college Suzuki felt that theatre clubs, where they mostly talked about european text, just goofed off. All this influenced his views on theatre at an early age. Tadashi Suzuki He is