Friday, March 08, 2013

Tamaki Hiroshi makes his stage play debut in "Hotel Majestic"

Tamaki Hiroshi made his stage play debut on 7 March when the first-day performance of "Hotel Majestic" was held at Shin Kokuritsu Gekijou in Shibuya. He plays the role of war cameraman Sawada Kyouichi who won the Pulitzer Prize for his photo of a mother and her four children trying to escape from the gunfire by swimming across a river during the Vietnam War. The play features Sawada's lifetime and Tamaki had to use the Tsugaru dialect for some of his lines in the play. Sakai Miki plays Sawada's wife Sata while his boss is played by Bessho Tetsuya and another female war photographer was played by Shibuki Jun. Being known as having a keen interest in photography and owning 20 cameras in his collection, Tamaki also went to Vietnam to take some photos which were displayed at the theatre and he commented that there would be an opportunity to show these photos to the late Sawada one day.

It had been Tamaki's dream to appear in a stage play since his 20s and in preparation for this role, he went to Sawada's hometown in Aomori to visit the real Sata in mid January. During his trip to Vietnam in late January, Sata was said to have asked Tamaki to take photos of a peaceful Vietnam. He even managed to take photos of the three children featured in Sawada's award-winning photo who are adults now. Tamaki commented that Sawada would have loved to find out how these children are living now so he was glad that he took their photos and displayed them in the theatre.

Source: Sanspo

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