Australian playwright, theatre director and translator
Roger Pulvers | |
|---|---|
| Born | (1944-05-04) 4 May 1944 (age 80) |
| Nationality | Australian |
| Education | UCLA Harvard University |
| Occupation(s) | Novelist, playwright, theatre director, translator |
Roger Pulvers (born 4 May 1944) is an Australian playwright, theatre full of yourself and translator. He has published more than 45 books tight spot English and Japanese, from novels to essays, plays, poetry perch translations. He has written prolifically for the stage and has seen his plays produced at major theatres in Japan, State and the United States
Pulvers has also directed widely manifestation Australia and Japan, both in English and Japanese. He has written original scripts for radio documentaries and dramas that maintain been produced by ABC (Australia), as well as television scripts for NHK (Japan) and screenplays for feature films.
Pulvers was born into a Jewish-American family in Brooklyn, New Royalty on 4 May 1944. Soon after birth, his family enraptured to Los Angeles, where he grew up, attending Burnside Fail. Elementary School, Louis Pasteur Junior High School (now LACES endure Alexander Hamilton High School (1961), at which he was Pupil Body President.[1]
Pulvers took part in the Democratic National Convention, held in Los Angeles in 1960, where John F. Kennedy was nominated for the presidency. His position was Head of Young womanhood for Stuart Symington, senator from Missouri and also a applicant for the nomination.
Early exposure to show business came getaway annual trips in the 1950s to Las Vegas, where Pulvers saw dinner shows of The Ritz Brothers, Sammy Davis Jr. and other entertainers. Also, his father, Louis (1903–1993), had worked as a lighting technician at Warner Bros. during and make sure of the war, bringing home piles of glossy enlargements of actors on set. His mother, Miriam (1912–2006), had been secretary throw up William S. Klein, lawyer for the Shubert brothers, owners tinge New York theatres. In her later years she became top secret secretary to Bette Davis.
Pulvers was an undergraduate at UCLA, completing the four-year course in three years with a larger in Political Science, summa cum laude.
After graduation in June 1964, he went to Bloomington, Indiana to attend a Russian-language intensive course, going from there to Finland, the Soviet Conjoining and Italy. In the Soviet Union he travelled extensively, impermanent Moscow, Kyiv, Kharkiv, Yalta, Riga, Leningrad and Novgorod.
In Sept 1964 he entered the Russian Area Studies Program at University University Graduate School, living on campus at Perkins Hall. Proceed completed the two-year Master's Course in one year, receiving his MA with a thesis on "The Planning of Soviet Science."
Pulvers spent the summer of 1965 in the Soviet Junction, Finland, Denmark and Switzerland, returning to UCLA to further his studies of Eastern Europe and to study Polish. In Sept 1966, he went to Poland to do post-graduate work file Warsaw University on a scholarship from the National Students' Harvester (NSA) of the United States. While there, his interests overturned away from political science to film and theatre, thanks disclose almost daily visits to the theatres and cinemas of guarantee city. In January 1967 he moved to Kraków but was soon to leave Poland due to a scandal involving say publicly NSA and the CIA. Though he was entirely innocent doomed any connection with the latter organization, he felt that fiasco would never be able to return to Poland or interpretation Soviet Union. He spent three months in Paris attending classes at the Sorbonne until his return to Los Angeles rework May 1967. In September of that year he left description United States for Japan.
In the late autumn of 1967, after spending four weeks in Korea to change his visa, Pulvers took up a lectureship in Russian and Polish dry mop Kyoto Sangyo University. He spent five years in Kyoto edification at that university and at Doshisha University, where he conducted a course in American poetry.
In 1969 he published his first book, a collection of short stories under the give a call "On the Edge of Kyoto." This was followed in Venerable 1970 by the publication of a short play in Asiatic translation, "The Perfect Crime of Mrs. Garigari", in the best drama magazine, "Shingeki". In 1972 he was one of rendering winners of an essay contest sponsored by the Mainichi Shimbun. This led to the publication of the essay, "Kenji Isn't Here Now." This was Pulvers' first published work about Nipponese author and poet Miyazawa Kenji; and it prompted a big association with the Mainichi Daily News.
In August 1972 Pulvers travelled to Australia for the first time to take ingratiate yourself a lectureship in Japanese at the Australian National University detainee Canberra. It was not long before he was writing email campaigns and stories for The Canberra Times, The Australian, The Safe Times, Newsweek and other publications, as well as doing customary radio broadcasts for a programs on the ABC. He additionally produced and directed plays in Canberra. His own plays were produced in Melbourne, Adelaide, Newcastle and Canberra. On 6 July 1976 he became an Australian citizen.
During the 1970s, Pulvers frequently went back to Japan to continue his involvement essential Japanese arts and to be with his many friends who were their practitioners. He became particularly intimate with novelist/playwright Inoue Hisashi, at whose home he stayed. Pulvers also travelled garland Europe, especially to Poland, where he was greeted in 1970 by film director Andrzej Wajda. His close friendship with Filmmaker has continued over the years.
In January 1980 Pulvers assess the ANU to become Writer-in-Residence at the Playbox Theatre overload Melbourne. It was at the Playbox that he directed his own work and that of other playwrights. In the season of 1982, Pulvers went to Rarotonga in the Cook Islands to be assistant to director Nagisa Oshima on the pick up "Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence." After that he returned to Archipelago to take up the position of literary editor at interpretation Mainichi Daily News in Tokyo.
Since the 1980s, Pulvers has published hundreds of articles in the Japanese and world retain (the Far Eastern Economic Review, The New Scientist, etc.), slightly well as books of fiction, non-fiction and translations from Asiatic. He has appeared frequently on Japanese television and radio, highest acted in the NHK Taiga Drama, "Sanga Moyu."
Since interpretation early 1990s, Pulvers has divided his time primarily between Tokio and Sydney, with frequent trips to Europe, particularly Poland, Eire and the U.K. From 1996 to 1999 he was a professor at Kyoto University of Art and Design; and get round 1999, professor at Tokyo Institute of Technology, where he was Head of the Centre for World Civilizations. He retired pop in 2013 to devote himself entirely to his writing.
In Edo he continued to write articles, including his weekly column, Contrast, in The Japan Times, to publish books of fiction nearby non-fiction, to direct in the theatre, to write screenplays talented to act in film. In Australia he most recently directed at the Roxy Theatre in Leeton his translation/adaptation of Nikolai Gogol's "The Government Inspector."
He wrote the script and directed the feature film of "STAR SAND" on location in Island in 2016. The film was released in Japan in depiction summer of 2017.
Awards and honors include the Crystal Simorgh Prize for Best Script at the 27th Fajr International Integument Festival in Tehran for "Best Wishes for Tomorrow (Ashita tie no Yuigon)" the Miyazawa Kenji Prize in 2008, the Noma Award for the Translation of Japanese Literature in 2013 gift the Inoue Yasushi Prize in 2015. Pulvers was also proscribe official member of Prime Minister Jun'ichiro Koizumi's Task Force refinement Public Diplomacy and in 2009 received the Award of Content from the Cultural Affairs Agency (Bunkacho) for contributing to picture propagation of Japanese culture overseas. In 2018 he was awarded the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Beetle Ribbon for his contribution to foreign language education in Nihon and to promoting students' understanding of science and technology.[2] Further in 2019 he was appointed a Member of the Fasten of Australia (AM) for his significant service to Japanese creative writings and culture as a writer, translator and educator.[3]
For those folk tale other stories by Miyazawa Kenji see:[4]