I hope PLAT is a place for finding pleasure for people.
Singing and dancing are basic ways in which people express themselves, along with shouting and silence. So, too, are laughter and crying and many other forms of expression. Yet in the theatre, all the performers and all the audience members are the heroes and heroines. You may have unexpected feelings in the theatre, even ones you've never experienced before. You may encounter behaviors and values that surprise or shock or excite you a lot. Whatever your reactions, though, they are your own. It's free to feel anything. You may realize that there are lots of different ways people express themselves in the world. You may agree with some of them, and not with others. Theatre is a live performance. It lives every moment. And you are the person who will discover real feelings about life, and the pleasure of life, there in the theatre.
I will be really pleased if you visit PLAT and encounter someone and/or something there and that gives you pleasure and leads to new discoveries and experiences — namely, it adds to the joy of living.
That will be my own, and every other PLAT person's, real pleasure.
Mitsuru Hirata / PLAT Artistic Adviser
Mitsuru Hirata was born in 1953 in Toyohashi City in Aichi prefecture. He is an officially appointed Ambassador of Toyohashi and he was made the
Artistic Adviser of Toyohashi Arts Theatre PLAT in April 2011.
He began acting while he was a student at Waseda University in Tokyo after he met the distinguished playwright and director Kohei Tsuka, whose theatre company he remained with until it broke up in 1983. Since then he has been busy acting on stage and TV, as well as in movies and TV commercials, and in 2006 he and his partner, Kanako Inoue, founded the theatre production company Aru Company.
Hirata has won several movie awards, including a Japan Academy Prize for his starring role as the bit-part actor Yasu in 1982's "Kamata Koshinkyoku" ("Fall Guy"), and in 2001 he was named Best Actor in the prestigious Yomiuri Theater Awards for his stage performances in "Konnichiwa Kasan" ("Hello, mother") and "Art."
