18 Facts About Ai Nagai

Ai Nagai is a Japanese playwright, stage director, and the co-founder and leader of the theater company Nitosha.

Ai Nagai is known for adopting realism as her primary writing style.

Ai Nagai was born on October 16,1951, in Tokyo, as the daughter of a painter and a member of the Communist Party, Kiyoshi Nagai.

In 1970, Ai Nagai studied at the theater department of Toho Gakuen College for four years, including two years in the postgraduate drama program.

Ai Nagai chose this college because she became a fan of the actress Etsuko Ichihara and aspired to become a member of the Haiyu-za company.

Ai Nagai and Oishi named their theater company "Nitosha" because they were both born in the Year of the Rabbit.

Nitosha continues to put works on stage as Ai Nagai writes and directs them.

Ai Nagai used to be the president of the Japan Playwrights Association.

Ai Nagai is active in other countries such as the United Kingdom, the United States, and South Korea.

The characters in these works are not interrelated, but Ai Nagai's approach is consistent because the postwar social issues and the plays' significance are portrayed by a particular family or by the events in an apartment building, their living conditions, and what they lost as Japan prioritizes the economic growth in the postwar period.

Ai Nagai connects Time's Storeroom to another social change, the abolition of legal prostitution in 1958.

Ai Nagai depicts the liberation from the socially constructed gender roles in a society that is deeply influenced by a division of labor, attitudes, and behavior by gender.

One of Ai Nagai's most popular plays, Men Who Want to Make Them Sing is a one-act play written in 2005.

Ai Nagai's play Women in a Holy Mess is "a hilarious portrayal of post-menopausal life" that portrays three women's lives and friendship.

Ai Nagai depicts familiar places, subconscious problems, and issues about language, gender, family, and community.

The clear and logical structure of Ai Nagai's plays makes it naturalistic The characters are caught in some predicament and the motor for the play's theatricality is how the characters are liberated from the predicament.

Ai Nagai's plays are easily accessible to Western audiences because her works are both traditionally Japanese while being very universal at the same time.

Sakate and Ai Nagai both combine elements of Shingeki and Angura.