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rika: You and I are Korean, from the top of our heads to the tips of our toes. We may look the same as the Japanese, but we're stuffed with kimchi. (Yakiniku Dragon, act 2)
In 2008, Satoh Makoto (1943-), the director of the Za-Koenji Public Theatre Tokyo and previous leader of the Black Tent (Kuro Tento), approached the Arts Centre Melbourne to co-promote the works of young and midcareer playwrights throughout East Asia, Southeast Asia, and Australasia (see Za-Koenji Public Theatre n.d.). This partnership was also to nurture an understanding of these works between playwrights, translators, directors, dramaturges, and actors. The following year, Za-Koenji organized the first workshop in Tokyo. In August 2011, the Arts Centre Melbourne and the Victorian College of the Arts held a second workshop, Asian Playwrights Meeting Mel- bourne 2011: Public Readings, which featured the works of five play- wrights. Students and graduates of the Victorian College of the Arts Drama School at the University of Melbourne presented readings of three English-language plays and two translated works. This translation of Yakiniku Dragon (Yakiniku Doragon ..., 2008) by Chong Wishing [...] (1957-)1 was the final performance and, with six acts and a cast of fifteen, the only full-length piece of the two-day work- shop, the remainder being one-act works.
The Australia-Japan partnership was built upon a long-exist- ing relationship between Satoh and the Australian playwright John Romeril, both 1960s-generation theatre makers. In 1995, Satoh directed a Japanese-language version of Romeril's play The Floating World, which addresses the Australian experience of Japan's treatment of POWs in World War II. That production was performed in Tokyo and in Mel- bourne, where it was premiered at the 1995 Melbourne Festival and produced by Rosemary Hinde, now artistic director of the Melbourne Arts Centre Asian Performing Arts Series (Eckersall 2013). Hinde, with the recommendation of Peter Eckersall at Melbourne University, was responsible for my participation as translator in this project. The Japan Playwrights Association (...) selected Chong as the Japa- nese representative, and Sakate Yoji (...), the association presi- dent, recommended Yakiniku Dragon for the workshop.
The New National Theatre in Tokyo and the Seoul Arts Center co-produced Yakiniku Dragon, which premiered in both cities in 2008, with the...