Spirited Away Live on Stage with Kanna Hashimoto

Masterpieces from Studio Ghibli Full Festival Schedule

In 2002 the film Spirited Away introduced Miyazaki’s imaginative worlds to English-speaking audiences when it won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature Film. Twenty years later, Tony Award-winning director John Caird (Les Misérables) created a live-action adaptation of Spirited Away for the Tokyo stage. Combining human actors with fantastic staging and amazing puppetry, Caird created a dazzling spectacle that rivals its animated origins. The huge production required two separate casts to alternate the performances; the Modern is proud to present both versions of Spirited Away Live on Stage(2022).

The August 11 show presents the version featuring Kanna Hashimoto as Chihiro. Prior to this role, Hashimoto had already performed in four live-action Japanese films based on anime and manga series: as Ritsu in Assassination Classroom (2015) and Assassination Classroom: Graduation (2016), and then as Kaguya in Kaguya-sama: Love is War (2019) and Kaguya-sama: Love is War – Final (2021).
Watch the trailer for both versions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ED5Y8mz8P8g
Watch a scene featuring Kanna Hashimoto as Chihiro, Miyu Sakihi as Lin, and Mari Natsuki as Yubaba as they deal with the stink-spirit in the bathhouse: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUYD24MrRMs
170 minutes; PG; Japanese with English subtitles

Tickets and full-festival passes will be available online and at the admission desk beginning July 10.

All film screenings will be held in the Modern's auditorium. Tickets are $10; $8 for Friend-level Modern members; $7 for Associate-level Modern members and above. Cinephiles who plan to enjoy the weekend’s entire selection of films will receive a discount for pre-purchasing all of their tickets at once. 

Welcome to the Modern’s film festival, Masterpieces from Studio Ghibli. This year we are excited to feature an all-Ghibli festival showcasing five films from the animation masters who founded the studio—Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata—along with two versions of the live-action staging of Spirited Away in Tokyo. A highlight of our program is The Boy and the Heron, this year’s winner of the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature Film.

All films in the Masterpieces from Studio Ghibli Film Festival will be introduced by Dr. Marc Hairston, a research scientist at the University of Texas at Dallas. A professional space physicist, part-time anime scholar, and Fort Worth native, Hairston has hosted annual Japanese animation festivals at the Modern since 2012. He is one of the founding editors of Mechademia, the first academic journal focused on anime and manga studies and has written numerous scholarly articles about anime. With Dr. Pamela Gossin, also at UT Dallas, he has co-authored two books about anime and manga aimed at high-school-age readers, Cultural Guide to Anime and Manga (2023) and Exploring Anime and Manga (World of Art) (2024).