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MIT Professors Write, Direct Anime-Themed Play
posted on by Mikhail Koulikov
On Thursday, November 29, Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Dance Theater Ensemble will premiere Live Action Anime 2007: Madness at Mokuba, a play inspired by themes and images from classic robot anime series. The story of the play involves two teams, competing in the Giant Robot Contest at the fictitious "Mokuba Institute of Technology," that join together as a strange disease invades the campus. The performance will be held at the Kresge Little Theatre, on the MIT campus, and will be repeated on Friday, November 30 and Saturday, December 1.
The script for Madness at Mokuba was written by Dr. Ian Condry, an MIT professor who studies Japanese hip-hop culture and has recently moved into looking at various cutting-edge anime that are influenced by both Japanese and American media. The play is directed by another MIT professor, Thomas deFrantz, and the cast are all either students, professors, or employees of the university.
Prior to the first performance from 4:30 p.m. to 6:00 p.m., Dr. Condry will present a lecture on the global influence of Japanese animation. To promote this talk, the MIT News Office is currently featuring an interview with him. In the interview, Condry talks about the relationship between hip-hop and anime and argues that it has become a global, rather than exclusively Japanese, phenomenon.
