Hayao Miyazaki’s first solo-directed anime is being adapted to live-action as a stage play

Before there was Ghibli, there was Conan.

In recent years, we’ve seen a rapid rollout of live-action stage adaptations of the anime films of Studio Ghibli co-founder Hayao Miyazaki. Spirited Away, My Neighbor Totoro, and Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind have all been adapted, with Nausicaa even becoming a kabuki play.

Yet another Miyazaki-to-stage-play project has now been announced. This time, though, it’s not a Studio Ghibli movie that’s the source material, but a work from farther back in Miyazaki’s past: Future Boy Conan.

Though he’s best known as a filmmaker, Miyazaki’s didn’t start out directing anime for the big screen. His very first solo-directing credit was Future Boy Conan, an anime TV series which began airing in Japan in the spring of 1978. The 26-episdoe Future Boy Conan, a loose adaptation of American novelist Alexander Key’s The Incredible Tide, is an adventure anime that takes place in a world where human society has largely collapsed after a devastating global war, and, as you’d expect from a Miyazaki anime, man’s shortsighted inhumanity to man, and nature, are recurring themes.

The Future Boy Conan stage play will be directed by Israeli playwright Inbal Pinto, who previously directed stage adaptations Haruki Murakami’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and Yoko Sano’s The Cat That Lived a Million Lives. Pinto will also be handling the play’s choreography and art direction, with David Mambouch serving as co-director. The adapted script is being written by Yasuro Ito, and the composer for Future Boy Conan will be Umitaro Abe who also scored the Penguin Highway and Drifting Home anime movies.

The wait won’t be long for the Future Boy Conan play, as it’ll be opening at the Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre Playhouse (also known as Tokyo Geijutsu Gekijo) in Tokyo’s Ikebukuro district this coming May, with performances in June too at that location, followed by a national tour of yet-to-be-announced venues.

Related: Future Boy Conan stage play official website
Source, images: PR Times

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