This Lingering Life - World Premiere
Japanese Noh-inspired production written by New York-based Japanese-American playwright, Chiori Miyagawa. World Premiere will take place as part of Theatre of Yugen's 35th anniversary season. 28 characters, 24 scenes, ensemble of 9 actors. June 5-14.
Online, May 28, 2014 (Newswire.com) - The world premiere of New York-based playwright, Chiori Miyagawa's, This Lingering Life, will have a limited 2-week run in San Francisco this June as part of Theatre of Yugen's 35th anniversary season. Inspired by nine Japanese Noh plays — en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noh — from the 14th century, This Lingering Life will feature 28 characters in 24 scenes performed by an ensemble of 9 actors of diverse ethnicities. There are also several gender-crossing roles in the play: for example, the young warrior is played by a woman, and his mother is played by a male actor.
In this new theatrical work, time is compressed like an accordion pulling and pushing together the past with the present. Like the Noh plays that inspired it, This Lingering Life looks at the human conditions through the Buddhist concept of Karma: we all exist in a complex web of relationships, determined by emotions and actions from previous lives. This Lingering Life harkens to tradition while also reaching out from it; its performance benefits from a juxtaposition of traditional and modern dramatic paradigms. There is also a component of dance to the play.
Japanese-born, Chiori Miyagawa — www.chiorimiyagawa.com — who is making her San Francisco playwriting debut with This Lingering Life, has written a distinctly contemporary and Western play with the intensity of the classical Japanese drama at its root. In This Lingering Life, a battle is fought on a shore, a crazy woman looks for her kidnapped son, a father and son have a falling out that results in the son's becoming blind and homeless, parents conspire to break up their daughter's relationship by drowning her lover, and a poor old man falls in love with a wealthy young girl and commits suicide. Life goes on with people bumping into one another before and after death and in between. Like life, the play is simultaneously a hilarious comedy and a heartbreaking tragedy.
A Theatre of Yugen production, taking place at Z Space, 450 Florida St (@ 17th St.), San Francisco
June 5-14, 2014
Preview: June 5 @ 7pm; Opening Night: June 6 @ 8pm.
Add'l dates: June 7 @ 8pm, June 8 @ 2pm, June 11 @ 7pm, June 12 @ 7pm, June 13 @ 8pm, June 14 @ 8pm
*Post performance discussion with the cast and Jubilith Moore (Artistic Director) on Sunday, June 8 and Wednesday, June 11. Chiori Miyagawa (Playwright) and Eugenie Chan (Dramaturg) join the discussion on Saturday, June 14 (which will be co-presented by The Playwrights Foundation).
Tickets: $15-$50. www.theatreofyugen.org