UTSUBO launched in January, 2009 with a group of Japanese, English, French, and American members, styling ourselves as a 'minority troupe.' Before we knew it, our cast had grown to include members from Gambia, Poland, China, Korea and Iran, further adding to our 'minority' flavor. Everyone in UTSUBO speaks 3-5 languages, and our performances capitalize on this diversity to apply a sharp, 'non-straight-man' critique to language, culture, art, history and various social situations from a multi-lingual and multi-cultural perspective; something very unusual in Japanese theatre. Rather than destroying Japanese language, we see our mission as showing a way towards preventing the destruction of Japanese through over-reliance on English. |
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