Amon Miyamoto
Amon Miyamoto (宮本亞門; born January 4, 1958, in Tokyo) is a theater director. He has directed numerous productions in Japan and worldwide, including musicals, straight plays, opera, kabuki, and other art genres. In 2004, he became the first Japanese director to direct a musical on Broadway when he directed the revival of Pacific Overtures. That production received four Tony Award nominations.[1]
Miyamoto made his directing debut with his original musical I Got Merman, winning the National Performing Arts Festival Award. He is a recipient of the Matsuyo Akimoto Award of the Asahi Performing Arts Awards. He served as the inaugural artistic director of Kanagawa Arts Theater (KAAT) from 2010 to 2014.
Amon made his North American opera-directing debut in 2007 with the US premiere of Tan Dun's Tea: A Mirror of Soul at the Santa Fe Opera. His recent works in New York include The Temple of the Golden Pavilion at Lincoln Center Festival. His European opera credits include: The Magic Flute (Landestheater Linz in Austria), Le Pavillon d’Or (Opéra national du Rhin in France), Parsifal, and Madame Butterfly (Semperoper in Germany) which is also planned for the San Francisco Opera in 2023 and the Royal Danish Theatre in Copenhagen in 2024. He directed the pre-Broadway world premiere of The Karate Kid: The Musical on May 25, 2022, in St. Louis.
Early life and education[edit]
Miyamoto was born to parents who ran a café named “Sugawa” (now “Sabou Erika”) across from the Shinbashi Enbujō, one of the most prominent kabuki theaters in Tokyo. As a child, he paid frequent visits to the Shimbashi Enbujō as well as movie theaters, Kabuki-za, and other theaters under the influence of his mother who was a former dancer of the Shochiku Revue Company. In kindergarten, he began to study (Nihon Buyō) at Fujima School of Japanese Dance where Nakamura Kanzaburō XVIII was one of his peers. Around that time, he became absorbed in Hollywood films and began to learn about musicals. When he was in elementary school, he began practicing Tea ceremony. He was brought up right in the middle of Hanamachi, a Japanese courtesan and geisha district.
While in high school, he was cast as the leading role in the school's theater club production of Godspell in which he made his acting debut. This musical received positive reviews and was featured in the Kinema Shunpo magazine. He proceeded to attend Tamagawa University, where he majored in Theater in the College of Arts. In the middle of his senior year, he was cast as a dancer in the musical Pippin.
Early career[edit]
He debuted as a dancer in 1980. He performed in musicals such as Hair, Annie Get Your Gun, and Chicago, and devoted his time to dance and choreography. He visited New York repeatedly, and studied in London for two years beginning in 1985.
He made his directing debut with his original musical I Got Merman in 1987. The following year, he received the Agency for Cultural Affairs' Performing Arts Festival Award.