Satoko Ichihara

Born in 1988 in Osaka, Satoko Ichihara is a Japanese playwright, stage director, novelist and artistic director of the Kinosaki International Arts Center (KIAC). She studied drama at J.F. Oberlin University in Tokyo and has been running the Q theatre company since 2011. She writes and directs plays that deal with human behaviour, the physiology of the body and the discomfort surrounding these themes, using language and physical sensitivity. In 2011, she was awarded the Aichi Arts Foundation Drama Prize for her play Insects. In 2019, Satoko Ichihara published her first collection of stories, Mamito no tenshi (Mamito's Angel). In the same year, The Bacchae - Holstein Milk Cows, based on a Greek tragedy, premiered at the 2019 Aichi Triennale and won the 64th Kishida Kunio Playwriting Prize. In 2021, she co-produced Madama Butterfly with Zurich's Theater Neumarkt, which has been presented at the Zurcher Theater Spektakel, the SPIELART Theatre Festival (Munich) and the Wiener Festwochen.