History

Kee Company was founded in Tokyo by Canadian theatre artist Colleen LANKI in spring of 1996 to produce 母-Haha, a collectively created, bilingual, multi-disciplinary show which explored the mother-daughter relationship. The collective formed to write and perform this piece included women from Japan, Australia, Canada and the U.S.A. 母-Haha was first performed in Tokyo in February 1997, and in July of the same year, the company toured to Toronto, Canada to perform the show at the Toronto Fringe Festival as part of Canada's Year of Asia Pacific. It was remounted in Tokyo in October 1997, under the directorial advisorship of NARAHASHI Yoko. Kee Company was invited to perform 母-Haha at the inaugural National Multicultural Festival in Canberra, Australia, and toured there in February 1998 with a grant from the Japan Foundation.

In March of 1998, Kee Company began work on another project entitled ほそ道 /Hoso Michi - The Narrow Road, exploring the theme of travel and voyages. Like Kee Company's previous show, this was bilingual and multi-disciplinary, involving movement, comedy and text. In order to write and develop ほそ道 /Hoso Michi, a new collective was formed involving five men and women from Canada, Japan and the U.S. These artists were designers, dancers, actors and directors. ほそ道 /Hoso Michi played to sold out houses at Tokyo's Studio Akutore in May of 1999.

May 2000 saw the performance of FACETS, a piece that combined movement, sound and "video poems"-specially timed projected text. FACETS was created by Colleen Lanki in collaboration with video artist SENOU Toru. It explored four different aspects of one woman, and, like other Kee Company shows, was multi-lingual: this time in English, Japanese and Chinese.

In June 2001 Kee's biggest show was produced in conjunction with Theater X(cai) in Tokyo. This show was called HOME/家 and followed the stories of four characters in their search for the meaning of home. HOME/家 was created by a collective of four artists from Japan, the U.S. and Canada, with original music composed and performed by MIYAKE Haruna. Performers included an ensemble from Japan, Mexico , Australia and Malaysia.

The Origin of the Name "Kee"

Kee comes from the Japanese "ki" which means breath, spirit or inspiration and the English "key" which is used to unlock doors. The spelling was chosen so that neither the English nor Japanese meanings were immediately obvious or prevalent. The idea was to reflect complex meanings and multiple cultures within a single simple word.

About the Artistic Director

Colleen Lanki was born and raised in Vancouver, Canada. She graduated with an Honours Degree in Theatre Performance from York University in Toronto, and has worked as an actor, director and choreographer for over 15 years. She moved to Tokyo in 1995, where she currently teaches creative movement for actors at the UPS Academy and studies nihon buyoh and noh. She has performed with various theatre groups in Japan in every style from noh-fusion to modern realism. She founded Kee Company in 1996 to work interculturally and bilingually with Japanese theatre artists.