A Yukio Mishima stage adaptation pulls genre-bending strings

In 1950, a novice priest, jealous of the Temple of the Golden Pavilion’s opulent beauty, burned it to the ground. The Kyoto temple was later rebuilt and sparked numerous stories of both destruction and beauty.

The structure, known as Kinkakuji in Japanese, attracts hordes of tourists today and “casts a long shadow across cultures,” says Marcos Morau, an acclaimed Spanish choreographer and director.

Morau has teamed up with bunraku master puppeteer Tamasuke Yoshida to adapt Yukio Mishima’s 1956 novel “Temple of the Golden Pavilion,” which dramatizes the 1950 arson, for the stage.