Japanese Storyteller Karin Amano
About Karin Amano
Karin, 3 years old in Shizuoka, Japan
Karin Amano was born near Mt. Fuji, in Japan’s Shizuoka prefecture. She loved entertaining people and started singing and telling stories for her neighbors at the
age of 3. Karin moved to Tokyo when she was 6 and had already written, directed and performed a school play by the time she was 8. Before long she started taking Karate lessons and learning Japanese traditional dance, acting and singing. She toured all over Japan for children’s musical theater productions and also appeared on TV.
After receiving her Associate’s degree at Obirin Junior College in Tokyo, she moved to NYC and received her Bachelor's degree in Educational Theater from New York University.
At New York University she studied with nationally recognized professors in the educational theater field, such as Dr. Nellie McCaslin, the leading authority on theater for young people (Theater for the Young Audiences), award-winning playwright Aurand Harris (Playwriting technique), and
Drs. Nancy and Lowell Swortzel, co-founders of the nation’s first educational theater program (Dramatic Activities in the Classroom, American Musical Theater: Background and Analysis).
Karin went on to perform numerous plays for young audiences and to teach acting and dance summer camps for children in Central Park. She has also taught origami, Japanese language, folk dance and songs for children and adults at schools and conventions.
Actor faculty for leadership training
at Dramatic Solutions
Japanese traditional dance performance in Tokyo in 1988.
Karin performed in off-off Broadway productions including Shakespeare plays, one-woman shows, storytelling, and musicals. From 1998 to 2001, she emceed Japanese performing arts festivals at Carnegie Hall. She was hired as a storyteller by Walt Disney World in 1999 and was a full-time storyteller/comedic actor at Walt Disney World until 2010.
She still performs as a Holidays Around the World storyteller at Epcot’s Japan Pavilion every year. Karin not only performs as a storyteller but also does Japanese voice-overs, government leadership training at Dramatic Solutions,
in industrial videos and print modeling.
Karin has also done multimedia storytelling about the 2011 Japanese earthquake and tsunami for a Japan tsunami relief charity concert at Orlando’s Full Sail University. She has been telling stories at theaters, colleges, libraries, cultural festivals and conventions as a freelance storyteller over the several years. She was in a 2-person-play called Driving Miss Cherry Blossom written by Eric Pinder in May, 2019, and it won a Critics Choice Award for Best Play-Comedy at Orlando International Fringe Festival. She was also featured at the 47th National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough TN as an Exchange Place teller.
Partners in excellence & Spotlight award by Disney
