is a Japanese avant-garde

theatre director A theatre director or stage director is a professional in the theatre field who oversees and orchestrates the mounting of a theatre production such as a play, opera, dance, drama, musical theatre performance, etc. by unifying various endeavors a ...

and playwright. He was at the forefront of the ''

Angura , also known as the "Little Theater" (小劇場, ''shōgekijō'') movement, was a Japanese avant-garde theater movement in the 1960s and 1970s that reacted against the Bertolt Brecht, Brechtian modernism and formalist realism of postwar ''Shingeki ...

'' ("underground") theatre movement in Japan.

Early life and education

Makoto Satō was born in

Shinjuku is a special ward in Tokyo, Japan. It is a major commercial and administrative centre, housing the northern half of the busiest railway station in the world (Shinjuku Station) and the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building, the administration ...

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.468 ...

, on 23 August 1943. In 1965, he dropped out of

Waseda University , abbreviated as , is a private university, private research university in Shinjuku, Tokyo. Founded in 1882 as the ''Tōkyō Senmon Gakkō'' by Ōkuma Shigenobu, the school was formally renamed Waseda University in 1902. The university has numerou ...

to complete

Haiyuza Theatre Company The is a Japanese theatre company based in Tokyo, Japan. Along with the Mingei Theatre Company and Bungakuza it is considered one of the "Big Three" among Shingeki theatre troupes. Former Members *Eijirō Tōno *Koreya Senda *Eitaro Ozawa * ...

's training program.

Career

In 1966, Satō co-founded the

theatre troupe "Liberty Theatre" (自由劇場, ''Jiyū Gekijō'') to perform

-style productions. The troupe staged its early productions in a tiny rented basement beneath a plate glass store, which it promoted as its "Underground Theater" (アンダーグラウンド・シアター, ''Andāguraundo Shiatā''). This seems to have been the origin of the name "

," which was an abbreviation for "underground." In the late 1960s, the Liberty Theatre merged with several other groups to eventually become the Black Tent Theatre (劇団黒テント, ''Gekidan Kuro Tento''), primarily under Satō's creative direction, which traveled around Japan staging productions in a large black tent and became one of the most successful and profitable Angura troupes.

References

1943 births Living people People from Tokyo People from Shinjuku Japanese theatre directors 20th-century Japanese dramatists and playwrights {{theat-stub