Suzuki Company of Toga (SCOT) Toga, Japan Dionysus Tadashi Suzuki Director SCOT traces its history back to 1966 when Suzuki founded his company called the "Waseda Sho-Gekijo", perhaps the most prominent among the few remarkable avant-garde theatre groups which contributed to the turbulent glory of Japanese culture in the 1960. SCOT, as the Company was renamed in 1984, has established itself as a unique group characterised by (a) a creative space, ie. theatres and studios in the remote mountain village, Toga, specifically designed for its artistic ideal, (b) a systematic training method known as the Suzuki method, and (c) a clearly indentifiable acting style capable of creating supreme concentration. Tadashi Suzuki is the founder and director of the Suzuki Company of Toga (SCOT), Chairman of the Japan Performing Arts Centre, which organizes the Toga International Arts Festival and General Artistic Director of the Shizuoka Performing Arts Centre, and the creator of the Suzuki Method of Actor Training. He has set up the International Committee of the Theatre Olympics in 1993, together with theatre artists of the world. Not just one of the world's foremost theatre directors, Suzuki is an important theorist about performance. The Suzuki Method is a system of exercises, designed to be a realization of Suzuki's Philosophy. The cornerstone of this philosophy is a belief in the fact that human beings possess the ability to tap Into the expressive power of animal energy6 and that theatre, as a context for this expression, is socially and spirituaally crucial in the present-day global situation. Director's Notes on Dionysus Consciousness is a prison, and the walls of the prison are history. History emerges out of the relationship between the spirit of exuberant communal unity and the spirit of alienated individuality. These two modes of being form the two poles at either end of the arch of spiritual history. Dionysus focuses on how both the passionate belief in the group values of the story, and the doubting of those values, are contained within The Bacchae. A dramatic coexistence of the opposites.The conflict between Dionysus and Pentheus is not a battle between god and man. It is an altercation between a religious sect and political authority. A drama of conflict between two communal value systems that exist on the same plan. The aim here is not to stage Euripides' play, but to use Euripides'play to stage my world view. ¥ 27, 28, 29 May Moscow Chekhov Art Theatre Kamergersky Lane, 3