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Akira Takayama (高山明) (1969-) is a Japanese theatre director. He is the leader of the theatre unit Port B, which he founded in 2003 to create site-specific performances.〔(Port B website profile )〕 ==Career and Style== Takayama was born in 1969 and spent several years in Germany studying theatre and linguistics. He returned to Japan in 1999 where he started initially making German-influenced productions, such as an adaption of a Brecht Lehr-stücke. His projects are now characterized by their use of the identity or history of a certain locale, such as the Sugamo area of north Tokyo, and the interaction or involvement of the "audience". He looks at contemporary issues, such as the rising numbers of working poor in Japan, and also makes extensive use of social and digital media.〔Iwaki, Kyoko, Tokyo Theatre Today – Conversations with Eight Emerging Theatre Artists, 2011, pp. 36-38〕 Takayama's unit, Port B, is a loose team of artists, scholars and activists from different backgrounds. The name "Port B" is a reference to Portbou, the Spanish border town where Walter Benjamin committed suicide in his failed bid to escape the Nazis in 1940. Benjamin is an influence on Port B.〔Eckersall, Peter, Performativity and Event in 1960s Japan: City, Body, Memory, 2013, p.132〕 Later productions included ''Tokyo/Olympics'' (2007), which took audiences on a seven-hour bus tour of the places prominent in Tokyo's post-war recovery, as symbolized by its Olympic Games. Audience members also traveled through areas like Sugamo and Harajuku partly by foot, using an MP3 player to listen to commentary and interviews. In this way, the performance took on the form of an oral history walking tour and coach tour that is immersive for the participants.〔(Port B website )〕 〔Eckersall, op. cit., pp.132-160 passim〕 ''Sunshine 62'' (2008) was a walking tour of sites in Toshima ward, Tokyo, which has seen regeneration projects like the construction of the Sunshine 60 building, against the backdrop of sites that have disappeared, such as the former prison that housed war criminals.〔(Port B website )〕 In recent years Takayama has been presenting his new Port B work as part of the annual Festival/Tokyo, Japan's largest performing arts event.〔(Festival/Tokyo profile )〕 This includes ''Compartment City – Tokyo'' (2009), which saw a temporary prefab house installed in a park in Tokyo, where visitors could enter to watch video interviews with unexpected urban residents. It was intended partly to create an experience of the private space within the public, against the context of growing numbers of internet cafe "refugees" in Japan.〔(Festival/Tokyo 2009 website )〕 It was later also staged at the Wiener Festwochen. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Akira Takayama」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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