Kento Morita

Clown. Devised theater maker. AI artist. Teacher.

A clown tribute to my grandparents, performed in their home days before its demolition.

UPCOMING SHOWS AND WORKSHOPS

Japanese Grandma Funeral — Edinburgh Festival Fringe, ZOO Playground 1· Aug 7–30 · [Tickets]

Full calendar →[Here]

BIO

Kento Morita (森田ケント) is a Japanese American clown, devised theater maker, and Anthem Award–winning AI artist based in New York. His interactive piece Moment in Manzanar won Bronze for Best Use of AI at the Anthem Awards. His solo clown show Japanese Grandma Funeral runs at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in August 2026 (ZOO Venues). He has performed at Woolly Mammoth Theatre, SF Sketchfest, SketchFest Seattle, Tokyo Comedy Bar, UCB, and The Second City New York; appeared in the devised ensemble piece Guilt (dir. Sophie Amieva); and served as AI puppeteer and devising partner on Haruna Lee’s DADBOT at the Mercury Store alongside Jared Mezzocchi. He writes for The Onion and lends his voice to the Ambies Award–winning Cat in the Hat Cast and the video game Rise of the Ronin.

Machines and fools have this in common: both fail in public, and both reveal us. His work lives where they meet.

SELECTED WORKS

Japanese Grandma Funeral (2026)

Solo clown show. Edinburgh Festival Fringe, ZOO Venues, August 7–30, 2026.
Kento the clown missed his grandmother’s funeral in Japan due to Covid restrictions. He’s trying to recreate the traditional rites, but it keeps going wrong. Can the audience help him achieve closure in this gentle, heartwarming comedy? Blending clown and storytelling with Japanese and Okinawan funeral customs, Kento attempts to process 108 of his grandma’s memories, along with unresolved thoughts and small, stubborn facts about her life, in a show that is both deeply personal, yet widely relatable. What begins as a failed ceremony becomes a gentle, intimate invitation to laugh, remember and let go.

Poster, photo credit Sub/Urban Photography

Akira Kurosawa Explains His Movies and Yogurt (with live and active cultures!) (2025)

World premiere by Julia Izumi, dir. Aileen Wen McGroddy. Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, in partnership with New Georges. Originated the role of Actor 5, including a critically praised turn as a benshi — Japan’s silent-film narrators.

Photo: Cameron Whitman. From left: Kento Morita, Ashil Lee, Liz Lewis, Jamar Jones, Julia Izumi

Moment in Manzanar (2024)

Interactive AI experience. Anthem Award — Bronze, Best Use of AI. An encounter with the memory of Japanese American incarceration, built with conversational AI.

DADBOT — Haruna Lee (2026)

The Mercury Store, Brooklyn. Served as AI puppeteer and devising partner. Project led by Haruna Lee. A weeklong residency developing a performance where a language model becomes a puppet, father, exploring what it means to have a machine process memories.

Rehearsal photo. Back row from left: Maia Matsushita, Louis Changchien, Haruna Lee, Jared Mezzocchi. Front row from left: David Forsee, Kento Morita, Huai Huang

Guilt (2025)

Devised ensemble bouffon piece, dir. Sophie Amieva. (2025)

Top: Kento Morita. Bottom from left: Meaghan Robichaud, Ryan Pater, Hannah Mitchell, Eleanor Pienta

Duty Free Live! (2024)

Caveat, NYC. Co-producer and performer. An improv game show where the contestants play games from shows around the world.

Photo: Rachel Kenaston
From left: Kento Morita, Erin Church, RJ Williams, Christopher Morucci, Lanee’ Sanders, Grant Mulitz

TEACHING

Clown as Autobiography: Cultivating a Personal Practice

A workshop where participants transform their lived bodies, lives, and stories into clown performance — arriving with an object, a skill, and a problem, and leaving with more whimsical possibilities in both art and life. Rooted in play, complicité, and devising, and shaped by training at Ecole Philippe Gaulier, Christopher Bayes, and Spymonkey, and ten years of karate. Taught at Swear Jar Jamboree and in the artist series at Devise/Experiment.

Sessions run from three hours, to a full two-day weekend intensive.

Offered in English, Japanese. Workshop inquiries: me@kentmorita.com

Workshop participants playing “Darumasan Ga Koronda” as a way to experience fixed point. Photo:Kento Morita

Unlocking the Real Rhythm of Haiku

The common translation of haiku rules in English require the use of 5 syllables, 7 syllables, then 5 syllables on each line. This rule however, ignores the inherent rhythm of haiku in the original Japanese, that is represented by 5 on, 7 on, then 5 on. In this workshop, participants experience the real rhythm of haiku and write and perform haiku as a rhythm-based poem. This material has been used in a public school music classroom in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Sessions run one hour.

Offered in English. Workshop inquiries: me@kentmorita.com

Voice Acting is For You! Yes, You!

In this seminar, I coach non-voice actors through a line or two from their favorite anime, and by taking them through techniques from The Barrow Group, we let them experience voice acting, first-hand. Everyone leaves feeling like voice acting is within their grasp.