Tomorrow Will Be Fine and Other Plays and Theater Essays

A husband and wife reach the seaside only to find rain, boredom, and a telephone that refuses to leave work behind. In Tomorrow Will Be Fine, their thwarted holiday becomes a comedy of invented adventures, wounded pride, and the elusive promise of happiness. A second dramatic piece brings together an unlucky pair, an old man, and a boy on the threshold of a new year.

Around these plays, Kishida Kunio examines the theater he helped to reshape in 1920s Japan. Eleven essays ask how actors should be trained, how modern theater can support itself, and what different companies can contribute. He disputes theatrical fashions, weighs competing artistic schools, and describes the unsettling experience of watching another company perform his own work.

This selection brings the playwright’s domestic comedy into conversation with his criticism of the stage. Complete translations preserve the speeches, silences, arguments, and period judgments of all thirteen supplied works. Concise notes explain theatrical terms, names, textual variants, and uncertain readings.