There’s a tradition of female impersonation in the Kabuki theatre in which the roles are played by male actors known as onnagata. The art of men performing female roles has gradually attained maturity over the four hundred years since it was first practised. Onnagata roles are still presented today at many Japanese theatres every month. Another commonly used theatrical convention involves a single actor changing rapidly between two, three or more entirely different roles in the course of a single play.
 My work as a stage actor centres particularly on onnagata roles, but in recent years I’ve had more and more opportunity to play male roles too.
I thought a lot about which Shakespeare play would offer the most appropriate vehicle for highlighting these particular features of the Kabuki theatre.
Among the roles I considered were the title role in Hamlet and the tragic heroine of Romeo and Juliet, but choosing either of these roles would have entailed me playing an overtly male or female role. I should hasten to add though that these roles would of course have been well worth playing in themselves!
But in the case of Twelfth Night, with a bit of ingenuity it’s quite possible for a single actor to play the three male and female roles of Viola, Cesario and Sebastian, that is to say the roles of a twin brother and sister of similar physical appearance and the role in which the sister disguises herself as a man.
Twelfth Night therefore seemed to me to be the most appropriate play in the sense that it allowed for the possibility of bringing out the intrinsic interest of the Kabuki theatre while at the same time remaining faithful to Shakespeare’s original. I got going with the project in 2003 and the first performance was given at the Kabuki-za Theatre in Tokyo in 2005.

Kabuki has developed into one of the leading traditional theatrical genres in Japan over a period of 400 years during which actors have brought their ingenuity and sophistication to bear on works that have been created during each period. New works that have been favourably received by audiences have been put through a filter and many have thus survived to become classics in their own right.
For young actors such as myself, this is a world where we’re expected first and foremost to hand on works from the classical repertoire. The most important thing for me is to pay my respects to tradition and to succeed to the forms that have come down to the present after being polished by successive generations of renowned actors.
But, on the other hand, in order for the Kabuki theatre to be able to develop in the future, we need also to create new works that people with no knowledge of the classics will be able to enjoy. This is how we’ll be able to lay the groundwork for the classics of the future.
The first performances of the Ninagawa Twelfth Night were attended and enjoyed by a wide range of theatre-goers in addition to regular Kabuki theatre audiences.
I asked Yukio Ninagawa to direct this production because he has a deep knowledge of Shakespeare, in addition to which I thought he’d be able to incorporate the appeal of Kabuki as a spectacle into the production.
 I am very grateful to him, because it was his outstanding production of the play that made the first performances such a success. During the initial rehearsals my father Kikugoro came up with various ideas from his perspective as head of our Kabuki troupe.
  It was a most welcome surprise to have received so many theatre prizes during that first year.

Shakespeare is a great dramatist whose work is one of the supreme cultural assets of mankind. All over the world directors have attempted their own unique interpretations of Shakespeare’s work, which has provided the impetus for new developments in the theatre. The Ninagawa Macbeth, which was first performed in Tokyo in 1980 and subsequently in Edinburgh in 1985 and in London in 1987, was one of the fruits of such endeavours.
Ninagawa has also produced versions of The Tempest, Hamlet, King Lear, Pericles and Titus Andronicus. Based on his own unique interpretations of these plays, he has staged them with Japanese casts and production staff before audiences in Britain, where they’ve been enthusiastically received. Among these productions, I was particularly interested in Pericles, which boldly incorporates techniques originating in the Kabuki theatre.
When getting going with the Ninagawa Twelfth Night project, I was particularly insistent that the production should be rooted in the Kabuki theatre.
 Many attempts have been made in the past to translate Shakespeare’s text as it is into Japanese and to present the drama in a unique and distinctive manner. Such efforts have been highly significant in their own right, but my intention on this occasion was to create a production that brought out the stage and acting skills unique to the Kabuki theatre.
 To do this, we created a new play script in line with the conventions of Kabuki. The script is not in modern Japanese but in rather old-fashioned Japanese written in a pseudo-classical style.As a Japanese theatre director, Ninagawa’s cultural point of departure is inevitably the Kabuki theatre. As a Kabuki actor myself, I am very happy to have an opportunity to play a part with my colleagues in the Kabuki theatre in this production of the Ninagawa Twelfth Night.

The main reason for this was because we wanted to stress the character of the play as a spectacle using the giant props available in the Kabuki theatre. Another factor is that I have to do a rapid role change between Sebastian and Viola in this scene. The idea was to get people who have no knowledge of the Kabuki theatre to come to terms from the very outset with a performance style that involves an instantaneous transformation between male and female roles.
It goes without saying that we place the highest value on Shakespeare’s original work. It is imperative that later generations pay the greatest respect to outstanding theatrical works. My approach to this matter is no different from the great respect I have as a Kabuki actor for the jointly authored works of Takeda Izumo II, Miyoshi Shoraku and Namiki Senryu or the Kabuki classics created by Chikamatsu Monzaemon and Kawatake Mokuami.
But when transferring a work by Shakespeare to another medium such as film or the Kabuki theatre, engaging in a bold transformation of the original in response to the style that characterizes the medium in question is an essential strategy for reinterpreting the classics in a modern guise.

Yes, Yukio Ninagawa was particularly insistent that my father Kikugoro should take the two roles of Malvolio and Feste. I believe that the role of Malvolio in Twelfth Night has often been played in the past by leading actors of the day. Nobody had any doubts that my father would be ideally cast in the role of Malvolio on this occasion.
Ninagawa pointed out that the roles of the clown are very important for Shakespeare in both King Lear and Twelfth Night, and it was because of this that he suggested that Kikugoro should play this role. Since there are no works in the Kabuki theatre that include clowns with a reflective, intellectual bent, playing Feste is just as difficult as playing Malvolio.
 Because of this and bearing in mind the traditions of the Kabuki theatre, one of whose main attractions is the rapid transformation between roles effected by a single actor playing two or three roles, we decided that it would be appropriate for the most distinguished actor in the troupe to play these two roles.
 There can be no doubt that it is most unusual and perhaps unprecedented in the performance history of Twelfth Night for the same actor to play these two particular roles. 
There are sections of the play in which the two characters appear at the same time, and for this reason we’ve made various changes to the play script. I hope that audiences will be aware that these changes have been made in order to bring out the distinctive features of Kabuki and that they will enjoy the manner in which the actor distinguishes between the roles of Feste and Malvolio.

In 2004 I took part in performances of the Kabuki play Toribeyama shinju (The Suicides at Toribeyama) at the Théâtre National de Chaillot in Paris. In the course of that overseas tour, I fondly remember discussing with Yukio Ninagawa on a mobile phone my desire to stage the Ninagawa Twelfth Night.
We’re living in an age when we can immediately get in touch with people in London, Paris or Tokyo, so long as we bear the time zone difference in mind.
From that time I felt somehow that if we were going to do a Kabuki version of the original Shakespeare work, I would like very much to submit it to the judgment of highly demanding audiences in London, who love the theatre and take and apply their intellectual curiosity towards the theatre.
The earliest overseas performances of Kabuki date back to 1928, although the first time Kabuki was performed in London was in 1972. More recently, I myself along with my contemporaries Ichikawa Ebizo and Ichikawa Kamejiro performed in London in 2006. In each case we’ve presented works regarded as Kabuki classics.
I stated earlier that I have the greatest respect for the classics. Although the present performances are based on a play by the great dramatist Shakespeare, I felt that this would be a good opportunity to present the Kabuki version newly created in 2005. For one thing, I’d like audiences to appreciate the new wave that is now finding its way into the Kabuki theatre.
I’ve heard that there are many aficionados of the Kabuki theatre in London. There are no doubt many people who have seen overseas performances in the past and others who may have attended Kabuki performances on trips to Japan. Many have surely been impressed by the fact that such a unique form of traditional theatre exists in Japan.
It goes without saying that we’d like these London audiences who have enjoyed Kabuki in the past to see our performances on this occasion too. Another point is that, as an actor, almost nothing could excite me more than seeing how audiences who have been raised with a love of Shakespeare will react to our Kabuki version of his work.
I expect that the positive critical response which has hitherto greeted Yukio Ninagawa’s productions in London has been motivated by the fact that they are new creation achievements based on original interpretations of Shakespeare. I feel sure that London audiences who see our performances will take pleasure in the fact that Shakespeare is still very much alive today. I hope too that they will look forward in the future to further productions that attempt to take on fresh, daring challenges in this way.
I hope that everyone who sees the Ninagawa Twelfth Night will enjoy the possibilities that can arise when Shakespeare merges with traditional genres of theatre from all over the world.
I can scarcely wait for the London performances to get under way. Prior to the performances in London, early in March I’ll be giving a brief lecture on the history of the Kabuki theatre and the process that led up to the birth of the Ninagawa Twelfth Night at the British Embassy in Tokyo in the presence of the British ambassador.
Before the performances at the Barbican Theatre I hope I’ll be able to meet members of our London audiences in person at the preliminary talk session to be held at the theatre, and I look forward greatly to that opportunity.