Spirited Away’s stage director says Hayao Miyazaki is a sweetheart — and a songwriter

polygon.com:

When Toho Stage released the first photos of the puppets and performers from its live theater adaptation of Hayao Miyazaki’s beloved anime movie Spirited Away, it created a perfect recipe for FOMO. The images were rich, startling, and even funny. Miyazaki’s story about a young girl named Chihiro, trapped in the spirit world and forced to work at a bathhouse for the gods, never seemed like a project that could work outside of animation, but the photos were compelling. At the same time, it was clear that most of the worldwide fandom surrounding Miyazaki and Japanese production house Studio Ghibli would never have a chance to see the stage play themselves.

Spirited Away: Live on Stage pays off the promise of those initial images. Two versions of the stage show were filmed, with two different sets of performers in the lead roles as Chihiro and as Yubaba, the witch who runs the spirit bathhouse. Both versions are a chance for international audiences to see how renowned stage director John Caird transformed Miyazaki’s work into a live stage show, mixing traditional Japanese stage techniques with Western ones, and adding musical numbers written by Miyazaki himself. Polygon sat down with Caird (who also directed both film versions) to talk about the adaptation process, how he got Miyazaki’s approval, and where he had to work hardest to get such a vividly visual movie to work in live action.

[Ed. note: This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.]

Polygon: Some of the earliest reports on this play said you met with Hayao Miyazaki and got his full approval for this stage adaptation. How did you convince him?

John Caird: When I met him and his producer, Toshio Suzuki, I thought I would have a very hard job persuading