The Bee

by Hideki Noda, Colin Teevan

One evening, Mr Ido arrives home from work to find his house surrounded by police and TV cameras. Inside, his wife and child are being held hostage by an escaped murderer. An otherwise normal day in an otherwise comfortable life is not ending how it should. But rather than play the victim and accept this terrible fate, Ido decides to take control and embarks upon an extraordinary mission of revenge. Set in Tokyo in 1974, this dark and unconventional satire asks what happens when the victim becomes the aggressor, the weak become powerful and the watcher becomes the watched.

72 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2007

About the author

Hideki Noda (野田 秀樹 Noda Hideki, born on 20 December 1955) is an acclaimed Japanese actor, playwright and theatre director who has written and directed more than 40 plays in Japan, and is working to bring modern Japanese theatre to an international audience.

Noda was born in Nagasaki, Japan. He briefly attended Tokyo University to study law but eventually dropped out. Noda debuted his first play, An Encounter Between Love and Death during his second year of high school. His second play, The Advent of the Beast, was well received by critics in 1981. This led to his invitation to perform at the Edinburgh International Festival in Scotland, which he already participated in three years earlier. In 2008 he was also appointed artistic director of Tokyo Metropolitan Art Space in Ikebukuro, and became a professor in the Department of Scenography Design, Drama,and Dance at Tama Art University.

When he was four years old, his family moved from Kyushu to Tokyo. When he reached the age of 16, Noda wrote and staged his very first play. With his high-school friends, he decided to title it, Ai to Shi o Mitsumete (Gaze into Love and Death). Later on in 1976, Noda founded his theatre company named Yume no Yuminsha (Dreaming Bohemian), while he was still in Tokyo University as a law student. Yume no Yuminsha became the emblem of the country’s vibrant youth theatre firmament and the leader of a nationwide cultural movement in the early 1980s known as Sho-gekijo (Small-scale Theatre Movement).

In 1992, Noda went to London to study theatre. When he returned to Japan, he started the independent company Noda Map, to promote and produce his own plays. He is currently held in high regard within the Japanese theatre community. Japanese theatre director Yukio Ninagawa said of him, "Hideki Noda is the most talented playwright in contemporary Japan."

At the age of 27, Noda won Japan’s most prestigious theatre accolade, the Kishida Prize for Drama for Nokemono Kitarite (Descent of the Brutes). Tickets to his plays became the hottest of all to get a hold of. Further pushed by Japan’s economy, Yume no Yuminsha broke all kinds of records by drawing as much as 26,000 audience to a one-day event at which Noda staged his version of Wagner's The Ring of the Nibelungs presented as a Stonehenge trilogy at the Yoyogi National Gymnasium in Tokyo.

In 2006, Noda Hideki wrote The Bee which is coauthored by Colin Teevan. This play was adapted to theater from Tsutsui Yasutaka’s novel Mushiriai (Plucking at Each Other). In 2006, The Bee was first staged in English by Soho Theatre and NODA MAP, and in 2007 in Japan by NODA MAP. He is currently in charge of The New National Theatre, where he works as a director. His plays focus on including celebrities to attract a wider audience rather than experimenting with different forms. Even though he primarily focuses on who he casts to play characters, "he brings in new audiences aplenty and also surreptitiously manages to sneak in satirical themes that only someone with his calibre could."

He became artistic director at the Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre in 2009.

Reviews

[Doug · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another odd play by Noda, incorporating Asian theatrical techniques within a Western setting. While its theme of how violence tends to both escalate and numb oneself to one's own actions once put into play, is certainly still relevant, I am not sure it is entirely successful as a theatrical entertainment ... nor quite sure of the symbolic significance of the titular character either.

[Deb · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very intriguing play in which the actors play multiple characters - even switching gender. In the premiere New York production the protagonist was played by a woman. A truly modern tragedy loaded with cynical humour.

The Bee is based on the 1976 short story Mushiriai (Plucking At Each Other) by novelist Yasutaka Tsutsui and has been composed as an original English-language play by Hideki Noda with the final writing by the Irish playwright Colin Teevan based on a workshop involving Noda, Teevan and British actors. The play premiered at London’s Soho Theatre from June 21 to July 15, 2006 starring actress Kathryn Hunter and Noda. Read more about it here: http://performingarts.jp/E/play/0608/...

[Grace Leneghan · Rating 3 out of 5]

VERY WEIRD. The Bee is a quick satirical read and I really enjoyed picturing the staging of the story in my head.