Oriza Hirata

As a result, his plays oftentimes feature multiple characters talking at once, sentence fragments, inaudible speech, and an understated, "normal" speaking tone.

[1] However, Hirata has preferred his own stylistic title of "contemporary colloquial theater" because he thinks that relatable terms like Shingeki or realism "sounded too much like the Western drama that [they] emulated.

[8] This style also tends to emphasize a small, intimate set of characters—usually represented by the actors playing the role of a family—to serve as a “microcosm of Japanese society as a whole.” [1] Japanese theater scholar, M. Cody Poulton, describes Hirata's style as an emphasis of the Greek idea of ethos, "the prevalent tone of sentiment of a people or community; the genius of an institution or system.

[11] Since then, Hirata's work and company have traveled much of the world, including France, Belgium, Switzerland, Ireland, Germany, the United Kingdom, Korea, China, Australia, and Brazil.

[5][8] Hirata has also collaborated on many international works inside of Japan, using his theater to stage plays by playwrights from France, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, the United States, Korea, and China.

[5] A year after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, Hirata submitted a 10-minute play, along with 18 other American and Japanese artist, to be performed and documented in an event called Shinsai: Theaters For Japan.

Hirata's play, entitled "Sayonara II", tells the story of a partially-broken robot who is asked to read poems to the people who died after the disaster.