Born in 1939 in Shimizu, Japan. In 1966, Suzuki formed Waseda-shōgekijō (Little Theatre Waseda) in Tokyo – a leading company of Japanese avant-garde theatre in the sixties. In 1976, he moved to the mountain village of Toga (Toyama on Honsiu Island), and in 1984, he changed his company into the Suzuki Company of Toga (SCOT).

Since 1982, he has been organizing an annual international theatre festival in Toga – the first theatre festival in Japan. Thanks to Suzuki, Japanese audiences could see the works of Robert Wilson, Tadeusz Kantor, Yuri Lyubimov, Theodoros Terzopoulos, Georges Lavaudant, Lee Breuer, Anne Bogart, Ratan Thiyam, and many others.

Suzuki has created an original method of actor training and taught it in many places throughout the world, including The Julliard School in New York and Moscow Art Theatre.

Between 1995 and 2007 he was the General Artistic Director at Shizuoka Performing Arts Center. He is a member of the International Theatre Olympics Committee and is a co-founder of BeSeTo – a festival jointly organized by Japan, China and Korea in their capital cities (hence the name: Be – Beijing, Se – Seul, To – Tokyo). He is the Chairman of the Board of Directors for the Japan Performing Arts Foundation.

As a result of a long-term collaboration between Suzuki and the famous Japanese architect Arata Isozaki, eight unique theatre spaces were build in Toga, including an innovative amphitheatre on water.

Suzuki’s works include On the Dramatic Passions, The Trojan Women, Dionysus, King Lear, Cyrano de Bergerac, Madame de Sade, and many others. Besides productions with his own company, he has worked as a director in the international collaborative projects in United States (The Tale of Lear), Russia (King Lear, Electra), and Germany (Oedipus).

Suzuki believes in a form of universal theatre which overcomes cultural and national barriers. Themes taken from Western culture (from Euripides to Chekhov) meet up with the tradition of nō theatre and kabuki in his works; and ancient songs, movement and combat techniques merge together in his innovative methods of physical and vocal work.

Suzuki has articulated his theories in a number of books. His concerns include the structure of a theater group, the creation and use of theatrical space, and the overcoming of cultural and national barriers in the interest of creating work based on that which is universal.

“The basis for theatre craft is the work of the feet,” writes Suzki in Grammar of Feet (translated from Japanese by Anna Samborska, Didaskalia 2002/48), published in his book Ekkoyō suru chikara. “The whole body posture depends on it while the gestures of hands and arms only add an expression. In many cases feet have also an influence on the strength of the voice. Somebody without hands or arms could still be an actor but I doubt same could be said about somebody without legs. […] Actor’s craft begins with realizing that he stands on the ground – strongly, as if he was rooted, or on a contrary – as if he was about to take off and fly away with lightness. Everything is based on this impression and on the way in which actor’s body connects to the ground. This is precisely why only trough the feet one realizes he is an actor. […] In theatre, in opposition to dance, the actor’s body is not the only way of expression. It is words that distinguish theatre. I decided to explore various body postures in everyday life. Words are born in a human body in precise positions. These positions are made of a few basic elements and their variations. I believe that a contemporary actor should foremost be able to realize the connection between body positions and ways of speaking.”

Suzuki has presented work in Poland only once, in the summer of 1975, when he presented Dramatic Passions II as part of the National Theatres’ Season in Warsaw.