In the next few weeks, we will be highlighting the profiles and voices of some international artists in the UK in this series. Read on to learn more about their practices, their stories and their visions. 🔥

Marina Hata is an actor/physical performer/theatre maker originally from Japan. She began her career as a stage actor in Japan, appearing in many acclaimed theatres such as Haiyuza Theatre and Mitsukoshi Theatre. Roles she has played include Antigone in “Antigone”, Ursula in “Much Ado about Nothing” and Puck in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” (all in Tokyo) among many others. After successfully graduating from BA Acting course at Manchester School of Theatre (MMU) in 2023, she has contributed to various R&Ds and multi-disciplinary theatre pieces using her strong physicality. Her most recent credits are “A Voice Lesson” (Britten Pears Arts, 2023, dir. Anna-Helena McLean), “Intransigent Lines” (Bloomsbury Festival, 2023/The Yard, 2024, dir. Megan Brewer) and will soon appear in “Singing as Life Practice and Songtits Concert” lead by Emma Bonnici and “Waldrand” by Transit Production & Theatre Voliere at The Cockpit as a part of Poetry Plays.

Photo from Creators Residency with Temper Theatre

Q: What you do as an artist straddles theatre, song and movement—how would you describe your practice?

A: I see the time and the space of creativity as a slit in our daily lives -to me it’s very much like that create by ”the subtle knife” in “His Dark Materials” trilogy by Phillip Pullman -, and without the glimpses into these slits, I cannot understand nor withstand this world.

And in one of them, there is a very primal, free realm where an individual is simply a spirit that can go anywhere, form anything, feel everything, dance, sing, melt, and flow with anyone. Being stripped off of cultural constrains, attachments, politics, countries, relationships (that, for many people, their world itself). Some might call it imagination. But to me it’s far, far more real than that. It is my home. And the theatre is, for me, the most welcoming venue (except for nature) for this realm to materialise itself in our society through mediums – stories and characters.

In our most visible, socially acknowledged world, I am a female. I have a diagnosis of Autism. I am a queer. I have a home country, called Japan. But more profoundly, I have my home world. And I practice my movement, voice because I want my worldly body to be fluent in the languages of my home world, then meet and play more freely with another spirits through bodies, in the “venue”. To live.

From “Intransigent Lines” by Lizzie Milton, directed by Megan Brewer at The Yard, Manchester, 2024

Q: ‘Theatre can create spaces of belonging for those who don’t have that in real life.’ – how would you respond to this?

A: Both as an actor and as a person, I’ve always been interested in what’s beyond society and the so-called world we live in.

There are so many roots that lead one into its soul.
And recently, the need for highlighting the creative/actor’s social identity is more and more discussed and centered as never before. And I think that is, of course, a wonderful movement in terms of creating a space for communities that have not been given.

However, the reason why I feel I belong to the theatre is different from that.

There is always a part of a community -of the ones assigned to you by no choice- that is unacknowledged by the rest.
If we say “Asian culture/feature”, for example, as I am Japanese, there are so many things I don’t resonate with (there are things I do too).

Here are my might-be-trivial examples: “The education/career-driven parents”. On SNS, there are thousands of Asian people who respond with a wholehearted nod to this aspect of Asian culture. But not my family.
“The beauty of the black, silky, straight hair” Ok. How about my curly hair? Is it not Asian?”

I think that when things that are true to MOST are celebrated, sometimes the rest can be left feeling double-forgotten- out and inside the community. When the city gets bigger and one road becomes a main road, there will be an ally shadowed by it. It is not right or wrong. It’s just the way it is.
And I often find my identity and solidarity more with this “rest”, regardless of the community. )

That’s why I have no fear, I am willing, even, to cross over my cultural/social identity in plays.
And by seeing others doing so, I can finally say that there are people like me- Not “people who look like me”.
Because to me, that represents how I believe what an actor’s job is- to live in actions, to be non judgemental, to challenge, to find something in common in the lives different to yours, and to connect.

So what does it mean to connect? I’m sure the answer is different from one another. And my current response to that is, to meet each other as souls instead of starting with assumptions-even the assumptions that appear to be positive, like “We must have so much in common” “Oh I know how it’s like!”, for example.

If there is one thing that we all, I mean, all of us humans, have in common, is that we live and that is the only truth we can actually know in front of another. And for the rest, we listen.

Photo from Creators Residency with Temper Theatre

Q: What is keeping you busy right now?

A: Alongside working in several different devising productions, I’m very slowly developping my own piece, which centres around the connection between a human and nature as one’s life source.In our modern days, how can people feel instead of know? How can we understand each other without verbalising our thoughts, assuming nor rationalising the other in our head? These are the questions useful for exploring the piece mentioned, but also, they are my foundation as a creative.