永井愛の「普通の演劇」

――寓意的風俗喜劇――

抄録

Nagai Ai, a representative contemporary Japanese playwright, says that her theatre is, as it were, “conventional theatre.” By “conventional” she means not only the ordinary and normal qualities of her work, but also the traditional style or method of so-called naturalism that characterized orthodox modern Japanese theatre (shingeki), which was regarded as old-fashioned by both critics the younger generation in the 1970s and 1980s. This article points out some of the important characteristics of Nagai's “conventional theatre” by analyzing mainly three plays: Kazuo, The Three Sisters of the Hagi Family, and Hello, Mother. They depict ordinary Japanese people; the scenes are set in typical Japanese spaces of daily life; and the basic structure of each play reflects ordinary Japanese ways of life under contemporary social conditions. These characteristics function together in her plays and give her comedies allegorical touches.