Claude Regy says the team at the Shizuoka Performing Arts Center (SPAC) threw him the ¡°best birthday party ever¡± when he arrived in Japan just days after the actual May 1 occasion.
The 90-year-old French director is hoping for an even better birthday gift, though, as he is here to re-create ¡ª with Japanese actors ¡ª his triumphant 1985 staging of ¡°Interior¡± by the Belgian Nobel-laureate playwright Maurice Maeterlinck.
Shizuoka is a great place to do that. Regy¡¯s ¡°Interior¡± will be a part of this year¡¯s SPAC festival ¡ª World Theater Festival in Shizuoka Under Mt. Fuji ¡ª which has been growing in scope and reputation and runs on weekends through the entire month of June. While the title is lengthy, it¡¯s not a misnomer. The festival takes place at SPAC¡¯s Shizuoka Arts Theater as well as several open-air venues including the Udo Theater, set amid tea fields in the Nihondaira hills; in the precincts of a shrine in the nearby city of Fujinomiya; and on the water at a marine park in the city of Shimizu.
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