This edition of Tokyo Shinbun’s column on Takarazuka features musumeyaku Uta Chizuru, talking about her current performance in A Second Fortuitous Meeting NEXT GENERATION/Gran Cantate!!. The original column was written by Yamagishi Toshiyuki (estimated name reading) and was published here on July 14, 2022. (Archive link here.)
Blossoming Takarazuka: Developing into ‘an elegant musumeyaku’ – Star Troupe’s Uta Chizuru
[Chizuru] was tasked with her first junior heroine role in for the Star Troupe production A Second Fortuitous Meeting NEXT GENERATION – The Midnight Client. She plays Angelique, a girl full of secrets. The story is a romantic comedy full of many subplots unfolding around her and Luce, the heir to an earldom.
Maisora Hitomi, the main cast actress, advised her “You should live as Angelique”, and she took the stage with the awareness “she is a woman who possesses a secret strength, but also has a comedic side to her. While she demonstraed strong performance skill in actinging, singing, and dance, looking back on this major role, she says “I didn’t have any margin for error left inside myself.” She appears in a different role in the main cast (playing until July 24 in the Tokyo Takarazuka Theatre).
She first saw Takarazuka during middle school, on a trip with her mother. “They’re so beautiful! What a beautiful world!” she thought, and became obsessed. She had clearned classical ballet since she was a child, though she had only thought as far as ‘It would be nice if I could do this for a living’, but sitting in the audience that day decided her life path.
Although she is already a musumeyaku with high hopes at her fourth year in the company, there is still a freshness to her answers during the interview. Her environment changed last November, when she transferred from Moon to Star Troupe. Her approach to shows has changed: “I want to absorb these new new stimuli and use them as fuel for growth,” she says with a smile.
She swears to keep moving forward. “I love acting, so I hope through acting I can also communicate using singing and dance. I want to become an elegant musumeyaku.”
3 questions:
If you could only bring one thing to a deserted island, what would it be?
A helicopter. After I finished having fun on the island, I could go home (using the helicopter).
When do you think “I’m so happy”?
When I manage to get up earlier in the morning. I like listening to music while soaking up the sun.
If you had a week-long vacation what would you do?
I’d like to return to my home (in Hokkaido). I want to look at nature and relax while eating tasty foods. If I go back I’m definitely having ramen.