It has been announced that actor Kenji Urai will be making a guest appearance on WOWOW's live broadcast of the 78th Annual Tony Awards ceremony, which will be held at Radio City Music Hall in New York on Getsuku(Japan time).
Urai made his acting debut in 2000 in "Kamen Rider Kuuga" (TV Asahi). In 2004, he was selected to play the role of Crown Prince Rudolf in "Elisabeth". He has since established his career as a stage performer, winning the 31st Kikuta Kazuo Theater Award, the 22nd Yomiuri Theater Award for Best Actor, and the 67th Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology's Art Encouragement Prize for New Artists in the Theater Division. He is currently appearing in the musical "A Tale of Two Cities," which is being performed for the first time in 12 years, together with Yoshio Inoue, who serves as the host for this program.
Inoue and Emma Miyazawa will act as the show's hosts, with Taiga Kyomoto from"SixTONES" acting as a special supporter. As the live broadcast will be during the performance period of "A Tale of Two Cities," Inoue and Urai will appear from a studio in Osaka. The two's well-coordinated conversation is sure to be a highlight.
Also appearing will be Yusei Kageyama, a theater journalist with a thorough knowledge of Broadway, and Yasuhiko Katsuta, a director and professor at Osaka University of Arts. They will provide an easy-to-understand overview of the highlights of this year's Tony Awards.
"Live Coverage! The 78th Tony Awards Ceremony" (bilingual version, simultaneous interpretation) will be broadcast and streamed on WOWOW Prime and WOWOW On Demand from 8:00 am on June Getsuku. The subtitled version will be broadcast and streamed on WOWOW Prime and WOWOW On Demand from 2:00 pm on the 15th.
◇Comment from Kenji Urai
I've met a lot of people in the world of musicals! Once again, I'm impressed by the magnitude of this award and the strength of the desire to connect to the future! "Maybe, Happy Ending," which I participated in the Japanese version of, is a work that I personally feel very strongly about. With theaters still in chaos due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we continued rehearsing the performance with masks on, hoping not to extinguish the light of theater. That's why I feel that I learned a lot about the importance and preciousness of connecting hearts that the work has! I would like to feel the charm of musicals even more through this program.
