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Robert Allan Ackerman, 64, an acclaimed American director who produced many plays for theaters in Broadway, London's West End and other places around the world, has directed the inaugural show for his theater group launched in Japan, called "the company." The play, titled "1945" and inspired by Akira Kurosawa's film "Rashomon," is currently being performed at the Setagaya Public Theatre in Tokyo until Nov. 3. The Mainichi recently interviewed Ackerman about his new play and his passion for nurturing young acting talent in Japan.
Question: What does the title of your new play "1945" refer to?
Answer: That's the end of the war, and the play takes place in 1945. It's a romantic thriller set in postwar Japan, in a black market -- intrigue, romance and the end of the war. It's sort of in the style of 1940s film noir, like "Casablanca." It's meant to evoke the whole period in American and Japanese history. It's not a documentary about the war at all, but it uses the setting of post-war Japan.
Q: I hear the play is based on Ryunosuke Akutagawa's novel "Yabu no Naka." What motivated you to dramatize this Japanese novel?
A: I'm actually much more familiar with the film "Rashomon." What motivated me was my interest in doing something about Iraq. The Iraq War is now in what we call in America a "Rashomon situation," meaning everybody you ask has a different viewpoint or a different story. The Iraq War, as we discovered, was where everything -- including whether there were weapons of mass destruction -- turned out to be lies and everybody was telling a different story. That was really the genesis for the play. If you ask me what "1945" is about in one word, I would say it's about lies -- the effect of lies.
Q: Working with many Japanese actors, do you find any difference between them and their American counterparts in terms of acting environments?
A: I think it's much harder in Japan than anywhere else that I've ever been. The theater world in Japan is the most difficult, specifically for actors. Actors are not respected enough in Japan. They are not given enough opportunity to work. So much of Japanese show business is controlled by large agencies. And it's very difficult for people to get into those agencies. The star system exists in every country in the world, but in no place is it more dominant than in Japan. The Japanese system requires such a tremendous amount of work in terms of quantity. Every theater has to produce 12 plays a year. The sheer volume of things that are done is so tremendous.
In the West, there is an expression: "The play is the thing." The most important thing is the play. A producer wants to produce this play. A writer might take years to write the play. Everybody takes months preparing it. Everything is done for the preparation and the presentation of the play. In Japan, that's not always the case. Usually, you find an actor who's going to sell tickets and then find the play to put him in. The play is not the thing. And that I think is a very unfortunate thing in Japanese theater. It really takes a whole reorientation and a whole new way of looking at what theater is or what theater could be to change it.
I want young people to get a chance, to have the opportunity. Young actors (in Japan) have a really hard time. I don't see myself as a missionary. I'm not here to change things. I just want to participate in some sort of a movement to better the quality of the theater, and I'm hoping that somehow we can do that.
Q: You worked as a schoolteacher before you became a director. What do you find is lacking in the educational system in Japan?
A: I don't really know enough about that, but from what I have heard, I could imagine that what is lacking in the Japanese education system is the stimulation of people's imagination -- to allow people to have the freedom to imagine, to imagine new solutions to problems. I get the impression that people's imaginations are shut down. That's the difficult thing because in anything, whether it's art or whatever it is, being able to imagine new solutions to problems, or just to life, is essential to growth. I think that might be being stifled somewhat in Japan, that people are not looking for new solutions, they don't know how to.
Q: You have worked with many big-name actors in the U.S. Could you tell us about some of your most memorable experiences?
A: Working with Sean Penn, Meryl Streep and Al Pacino, those three actors had something in common: They never carried a script. They didn't learn the lines for rehearsals. They just improvised all the time, but always improvised very close to what was written in the script. After a few weeks of rehearsals, they were speaking the words exactly the way they were written, and eventually their acting became performances. I found that very striking that all three of them were like that. (Interviewed by Tetsuko Yoshida)
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Personal Profile
Robert Allan Ackerman was born in 1944 in New York and is currently based in Los Angeles. After teaching at primary and secondary schools in New York for about 10 years, he became a director and has directed many plays and films, including "Bent" (starring Richard Gere), "Salome" (starring Al Pacino), "Slab Boys" (starring Sean Penn, Kevin Bacon and Val Kilmer) on Broadway, "Burn This" (starring John Malkovich) in London, and "Angels in America" in Tokyo. Out of the approximately 80-member cast in the latest play, "1945," about 60 were chosen from among the participants of his workshop held in Tokyo this summer. He will be directing Tennessee Williams' "The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone" at Parco Theater in Tokyo in February next year.
(Mainichi Japan) October 26, 2008
 Copyright 2005-2006 THE MAINICHI NEWSPAPERS. All rights reserved. Mainichi features the best news in Japan, current news in Japan, Japan news in English, Japan business news, Tokyo Japan news, and Japan entertainment news. Mainichi News is syndicated in accordance with editorial regulations: personal and noncommercial purposes.
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