Akira Takayama

Akira Takayama (高山明) (1969-) is a Japanese theatre director. He is the leader of the theatre unit Port B, which he founded in 2003 to create site-specific performances. He also played Cliff Hanger's author Livinsgston Dangerously on Between the Lions.

Career and Style

Takayama was born in 1969 and spent several years in Germany studying theatre and linguistics. He returned to Japan in 1999 where he started initially making German-influenced productions, such as an adaption of a Brecht Lehr-stücke. His projects are now characterized by their use of the identity or history of a certain locale, such as the Sugamo area of north Tokyo, and the interaction or involvement of the "audience". He looks at contemporary issues, such as the rising numbers of working poor in Japan, and also makes extensive use of social and digital media.

Takayama's unit, Port B, is a loose team of artists, scholars and activists from different backgrounds. The name "Port B" is a reference to Portbou, the Spanish border town where Walter Benjamin committed suicide in his failed bid to escape the Nazis in 1940. Benjamin is an influence on Port B.

Akira

Akira may refer to:

See also

List of recurring The Simpsons characters

The Simpsons includes a large array of supporting characters: co-workers, teachers, family friends, extended relatives, townspeople, local celebrities, fictional characters within the show, and even animals. The writers originally intended many of these characters as one-time jokes or for fulfilling needed functions in the town. A number of them have gained expanded roles and have subsequently starred in their own episodes. According to the creator of The Simpsons, Matt Groening, the show adopted the concept of a large supporting cast from the Canadian sketch comedy show Second City Television.

Agnes Skinner

Agnes Skinner (voiced by Tress MacNeille) is the mother of Principal Skinner and first appeared in the first season episode "The Crepes of Wrath" as an old woman who embarrassingly calls her son "Spanky". However, as episodes progressed, the character turned bitter. She is very controlling of her son and often treats him as if he is a child. She hates Edna Krabappel due to her son's feelings for the other woman. Agnes has married four times. Several Springfield residents (including the Simpsons) are afraid of her. When "the real Seymour Skinner" arrives in Springfield, Agnes ends up rejecting him in part because he stands up to her, but also because unlike Skinner/Tamzarian, her biological son is independent and doesn't need her anymore, while Skinner immediately reverts to a good-for-nothing without her.

Akira (manga)

Akira (often stylized as AKIRA) is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Katsuhiro Otomo. Set in a post-apocalyptic Neo-Tokyo, the work uses conventions of the cyberpunk genre to detail a saga of turmoil. Initially serialized in the pages of Young Magazine from 1982 until 1990, the work was collected into six volumes by its publisher Kodansha. The work was first published in an English-language version by the Marvel Comics imprint Epic Comics, one of the first manga works to be translated in its entirety. Otomo's art is considered outstanding, and a breakthrough for both Otomo and the manga form. Throughout the breadth of the work, Otomo explores themes of social isolation, corruption, and power.

An animated film adaptation (anime) was released in 1988 which shortened the plot considerably, but retained much of the main character and plot structures from the manga as well as many original scenes and settings. The manga takes place in a longer time frame than the film, and involves a much wider array of characters and subplots. Otomo's Akira anime marked his transition from a career primarily in manga, to one almost exclusively in anime.