I was invited by the renowned Australian theatre company Dead Puppet Society to join a project adapting Kenji Miyazawa’s classic Night on the Galactic Railroad into an English stage play.

On 2 and 3 May we held a two-day workshop with read-throughs of the script and staged readings of several scenes. As a bilingual actor I was able to offer a distinct perspective, staying conscious of the gap between the Japanese cultural context and the sensibilities of an overseas audience while helping refine the script.

Performing a script aloud reveals what does not land and what can be improved; layering feedback on top of that, you can visibly watch the script get stronger. The full production is planned for four years from now. Expressing a Japanese classic in English is exactly where a bilingual actor can contribute most.