A work in constant progress (and occasional regress).
Birthplace:
Nihonbashi, Tokyo, Japan
Manami Hara was born and raised in Tokyo Japan. She became fascinated with Western theatre and the English language and at the age of 18, left Japan home to become a stage actor in North America. She moved to Vancouver, took ESL classes and graduated from Studio 58, a two-year conservatory Theatre Arts program at Langara College. As an Asian actor in the early 1990s, she was given rare opportunities to play roles such as Juliet in Romeo and Juliet (Carousel Theatre) and Miranda in The Tempest (Globe Theatre). As a young actor, working with Ruby Slippers on creating Herotica and Herotica 2 triggered a desire to develop and produce her own original art. ’Then,’ as Hara says, ‘came motherhood. I retired from the stage to care for my young family and I found myself losing my identity. My heart screamed and longed to live and breathe Theatre. So I began writing my first play at 2am in the morning when the house went dead quiet. Since then, my artistic path has lead me to be more than what I dreamed of. I am a playwright, a producer, an interpreter and a translator. I seek to explore creative and collaborative process where we take risks, fail, succeed, discover, grow and celebrate our artistry.’ Hara’s passion to teach youth the process of theatre making, acting and storytelling has grown over the years. She runs a drama program for youth called Acting Shmacting of which she says, ’It’s rewarding to witness young artists empowering themselves to become self-assured, creative and ensemble team players.’ Here is a list of companies Hara has had the privilege of working with over the years: Vancouver Asian Canadian Theatre, Boca del Lupo, Presentation House Theatre, Horseshoes & Hand Grenades Theatre, The Frank Theatre, Small Wooden Shoe, Gateway Theatre, Pi Theatre, Rumble Productions, The Vancouver Playhouse, Yayoi Movement Theatre, Theatre Replacement, On the Board, One Yellow Rabbit, The Grand Theatre, Touchstone theatre, Playwrights Theatre Centre, Arts Club, NAC, Factory Theatre, Theatre Passe Muraille, La Luna Productions, NeWorld Theatre, The Firehall Arts Centre.
Most data and links to images for the Movies section come from TheMovieDB (TMDB).
Additional data for Film Titles come from The Open Movie Database (OMDb).
At least one plug-in comes from IMDb.
Data are -- hey, it's a plural -- subject to the limitations of their sources. (For example, TMDB search results currently max out at 20.) I am limiting myself to free data sources for now. (No, a "free trial" is not free.)
While much of the above data are retrieved directly from outside APIs and other such sources, data from American Film Institute (AFI) and British Film Institute (BFI) were manually entered the old fashioned way into a MySQL database. Re BFI I took the following liberties:
Regarding profile removals and data corrections:
Filtering is applied here to film projects flagged as "adult" by TheMovieDB. Pending "popular demand" I am contemplating a login and profile system with preferences (such as whether to allow adult images to appear) and permissions (such as data entry).
Whereas the overall purpose of this website is to serve as a personal demo/portfolio/workshop of web and data skills, this Movies section is not meant to compete with or substitute for far more definitive movie websites.
Whether or not he still clings to an award which he won in 1986 as a film critic for his college's newspaper, Jeffrey Hartmann is not responsible for the texts of overviews and biographies supplied by external data sources.