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Princess Mononoke Play Will Have Original Joe Hisaishi Music

posted on by Andrew Osmond
Also, the play's Tokyo run is supported by the British Council and sponsored by Disney.

The Whole Hog Theatre company has announced that its stage adaptation of Hayao Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke will feature the original music by Joe Hisaishi. It had previously been planned that the play would feature an original score.

It has also just been announced that the play will travel to Tokyo for performances from April 29 to June 6. (These performances will come between the two sold-out runs at London's New Diorama Theatre, in April and late June.) According to the Whole Hog page, the Japanese performance is supported by the British Council and sponsored by Walt Disney Studios. The Japanese performance has its own English-language page here. The latter page mentions that the production plan for the stage Princess Mononoke

...was started by Alexandra Rutter, co-founder and director of Whole Hog Theatre, who was highly impressed by Studio Ghibli's works. She contacted Hayao Miyazaki with a short test film created by the company, and Miyazaki gave her the “go-ahead” for the performance. This was the first time that Miyazaki approved a stage production of one of his films.

There is also a press release about the decision to use Joe Hisaishi's music:

We had been preparing a new score for Princess Mononoke inspired by the music from the film and specially written for violin, double bass, piano and percussion. However, having been offered the chance by both Joe Hisaishi and Studio Ghibli to use the original film's music, our musical team will now begin working on bringing Princess Mononoke's soaring melodies to life... Having investigated the musical adaptation process further, sought additional advice and new support, and finally having been offered the blessing of Hisaishi-san himself, we feel we would be doing the film and its fans a disservice not to take him and the Studio up on their generous offer of using the film's music as the basis for our musical adaptation. The number of musicians will remain roughly the same at around 6 performers, but some instruments will be changed to better suit the original composition.

The play will feature human actors giant puppets (made from recycled materials).


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