Also available on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/c/SpeakingofShakespeare. [See SEGMENTS below] Thomas Dabbs speaks with Shoichiro Kawai of the University of Tokyo about his role as a director, playwright, translator, and scholar. Professor Kawai directs The Kawai Project, a multi-volume series that has staged productions of 'Much Ado about Nothing,'  'The Comedy of Errors,' and other Shakespearean plays and adaptations. Kawai has also adapted Samuel Beckett's 'Waiting for Godot' for the Japanese stage and has produced a Beckett-esque drama drawing from Shakespeare and echoing Beckett entitled 'Waiting for Will.'  LINKS: Kawai Project (in Japanese): https://www.kawaiproject.com SEGMENTS: 00:00:00 - Intro 00:02:08 - The Holy Trinity of being a Shakespearean 00:02:40 - Kawai Project: Waiting for Will and Samuel Beckett, Jean Jean Theatre 00:11:45 - Kawai Project: Translating ‘Waiting for Godot’ and ‘Waiting for Will’ 00:14:13 - Kawai Project: Much Ado about Nothing’: Immersive theatre 00:15:05 - Kawai Project: Comedy of Errors’ and ‘As You Like It’ 00:17:35 - Translating and writing plays in Japanese 00:18:45 - Kawai’s and translation theory: ‘To Be or Not To Be’ 00:35:20 - Shakespeare: ‘Master of the Theatre of Life’  00:40:30 - Cultural adaptation: Bunraku and (mostly) Kyōgen 00:49:20 - Critical theory vs doing and mimicry 00:52:16 - Coming work: Maugham, Poe, The Tempest, Henry IV 00:56:40 - The need for more Shakespearean drama 00:59:30 - Other Shakespearean activities in Japan, King Lear (again) 01:01:03 - Young Kawai and turning to theatre and Shakespeare 01:13:10 - Closing remarks, Hamlet is Fat