Seri Yanai, 41, is the co-founder of Mochinosha, an award-winning shadow puppetry company based in Koshigaya, Saitama Prefecture. With her Canadian partner, Daniel Wishes, whom she met in the U.K. while at the London School of Puppetry, Yanai has performed at festivals and in theaters in more than 50 cities around the world.
1. What is shadow puppetry? It’s a type of puppetry where the lead characters are the shadows cast by manipulating puppets. In other words, the shadows tell the story.
2. Were you interested in theater from a young age? In high school, I was deeply moved by Hideki Noda’s play “Hanshin: Half-God,” based on the manga by Moto Hagio. It made me realize theater is an all-embracing art form of music, story and bodily movement. I went on to do theater at university for four years and wanted to pursue a career in directing, but the chances of founding a theater company to direct and making it professionally in Japan were very thin, so I decided to try a different path in the U.K.
