菅尾 友
born in Sapporo, Tomo Sugao grew up in Chicago, Michigan, Amsterdam, Düsseldorf and Tokyo, where he studied at the International Christian University. At the age of 19, he already made his directorial debut with a production of The Magic Flute. From 2004-2008 he was engaged as a stage manager and assistant director at the New National Theatre Tokyo, and from 2008-2012 he held the same position at the Komische Oper Berlin. Since fall 2012 he has been a freelance director. In addition to various world premieres, including The Firmiana Rain (2007) at the National Theatre Taiwan, as well as Ghost Love (2018) at the Hong Kong City Hall Theatre, he has also staged Robin Hood (2014) at the Zurich Opera House, Norma (2015) at the Prague State Opera, Le Nozze di Figaro (2012), Don Giovanni (2015) and Così Fan Tutte (2018) at the Nissay Theatre in Tokyo, Les Huguenots (2016), Nixon in China (2018) and Götterdämmerung (2019) at Mainfranken Theater Würzburg, Freischütz (2017) and Das Märchen vom Zaren Saltan (2018) at Hyogo Performing Arts Center, The Hogboon (2017), Momotaro (2019) Amelia s’envole! (2019), Gold! (2021) at the Philharmonie Luxembourg, Die Zauberflöte für Kinder (2018) at the Salzburg Festival, Turandot (2019) and Madama Butterfly (2019) at Theater Dortmund, Faust (2020) at Theater Bielefeld, Il Trovatore (2020) at Saarländisches Staatstheater, and most recently Die Jungfrau von Orléans (2021) at the DomStufen Festival in Erfurt. In 2021 he directed for the first time Der arme Matrose, a film project by Mainfranken Theater Würzburg. He was a scholarship recipient of the Ministry of Culture of Japan (2008) and the Richard Wagner Association Würzburg (2009). He was also awarded the Gotoh Cultural Award for his production of Le Nozze di Figaro (2012). In 2013, the magazine Bungei Shunju listed 108 outstanding personalities representing Japan’s future and included Tomo Sugao among them.