Formed in 2001, theatre company ARICA persuits body-oriented performance interweaved with progressive modernism and vernacular speech, attracting national and international audience as performance beyond the boundaries of multiple artistic fields. 
ARICA was originally organized by five members: Yasuki Fujita (director), Shino Kuraishi (poet), Tomoko Ando (actor), Keizo Maeda (producer), Osamu Saruyama (musician). Later, Yoko Ando (textile coordinator, designer), Yuri Suyama (graphic designer), Naoya Watanabe (textile designer), Eijiro Takahashi (artist), Natsuko Motegi (performer), Satoshi Fukuoka (producer) joined as core members. 
Although they mainly create solo performances, each creation features artists from various fields such as dancers (Kota Yamazaki, Mika Kurosawa, Megumi Kamimura), actors (Akito Inui, Isao Okumura), musicians (Yutaka Fukuoka, Itoken), artists (Nao Nishihara, Teppei Kaneuji), and actionist (Takuzo Kubikukuri). These unique collaborations have attracted attention as a borderless performance correlating with creative works in visual art, music, architecture and design.
On the other hand, they have released pieces inspired by Samuel Beckett based on the research over the years. 
Also, in order to open up a new horizon of body expression, they have explored various ways of creation: live music and mechanical devices resonating with body movement and performance out of theatre stages to give site-specific approach to their pieces.
In recent years, they often perform overseas. They have developed their collaboration with local actors especially in India through their performance and workshops.

Yasuki Fujita was born in Tokyo in 1962. He studied modern art at Tama Art University and French literature at Tokyo Metropolitan University. Then he was enrolled in the directing section of the Bungakuza Theatre Company’s training school in 1995. In 1998, he started direction and stage design for the ih Theatre Company, and explored new ways of theatrical expression.
In 1999, Fujita began working with Tomoko Ando (who at the time was the central performer in the Tenkei Theater Company) on physical-based performance and improvisation. The lessons resulted in their first collaborated performance, She is there. Again.—Move on Beckett— in 2001. This play was based on the reconstruction of Samuel Beckett’s texts, and aimed to rediscover the actuality of formative physical expressions proposed in his late works represented by Quad.
In May 2001, Fujita cofounded ARICA Theatre Company with producer Keizo Maeda, composer/performer Osamu Saruyama, poet/photo critic Shino Kuraishi, and Ando. Fujita has directed all productions of ARICA since their first performance of Homesickness in November of the same year. In February 2009, he directed Le Grand Macabre for its first presentation in Japan (performed at the New National Theatre, Medium hall), and received a high reputation from the opera industry in Japan. Although Fujita has learned standard theatre approach and language, he questions plays driven by the drama/theatrical language and thus explores unique approaches to theatrical expressions in ARICA’s works, weaving together movement, text, sound, and objects.

Shino Kuraishi is a poet, art critic, and scholar of modern art, photography, museology. He was born in 1963 in Nagano prefecture. Currently Professor, Graduate Program in Places, Arts, and Consciousness, School of Science and Technology at the Meiji University. As a curator at the Yokohama Museum of Art 1988-2007, many exhibitions he was charge of included Man Ray, Robert Frank, Kishio Suga, Takuma Nakahira, and Lee Ufan. To the present he won awards as follows: New Poet Award by Eureka magazine in 1989; Koen Shigemori Award for Photography Criticism in 1998; Scholastic Achievement Award, The Photographic Society of Japan in 2011. Among his books published are: poetry book Tsukai【The Messenger】(2018), Sunappu Shotto: Shashin no Kagayaki【Snapshots: Blink of Photography】(2010), Paradise Lost: The Politics of Landscape 1870-1945 (with Tomoo Kashiwagi and Yasuhide Shimbata, 2004), Hanshashinron【Anti-photographic Theory】(1999). He is also a co-editor with Isao Nakazato, of Okinawa Shashinka Series: Ryukyu Retsuzo【The Okinawan Photographers: Ryukyu’s Raging Images】(9 vols., 2010–12).

Tomoko Ando was born in a rural area of Gifu prefecture, and spent her childhood playing with nature. She moved to Tokyo to go to college and was bewitched by the counterculture theatre at that time. In 1977, she joined the Tenkei Theatre Company led by Shōgo Ōta (playwrite/director). After the company broke up, she continued working with Ōta and appeared on stage for numerous international projects. In 2001, She cofounded the ARICA Theatre company with five members including director Yasuki Fujita, Poet/Critic Kuraishi Shino, and keep on performing new pieces internationally.
As her major works, there are The Water Station (Mizu no eki) and “↑” by the Tenkei Theatre Company and KIOSK, NeANTA, and Happy Days by ARICA.


Awards:
2005 Cairo International Experimental Theater Festival ver.17
Received special jury award for the best solo performance for excellent performance in Parachute Woman by ARICA


Filmography:

Dressing twelve-layered ceremonial kimono (documentary film)

The Day (Hakujitsu) —film directed by Nagaru Miyake

Autumn (Aki no riyû) —film directed by Kenji Fukuma

You are not me (Anata wa watashi janai) —film directed by Kei Shichiri



Other works:

2011 & 2017: Organized workshops in India
2017 April-2018 March: Part-time Lecturer for the graduate school of the University of Tokyo