Japan Society Presents Yoshi Oida's 'Interrogations,' 10/8 & 9

By: Sep. 17, 2010
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Japan Society proudly presents a two-night-only limited engagement of Yoshi Oida's comic one-man play Interrogations: Words of the Zen Masters in its current Performing Arts Season spanning Fall 2010 through Spring 2011. This production plays Friday, October 8 and Saturday, October 9 at 7:30 PM at Japan Society (333 East 47th Street).

Appearing for the first time in New York City in 12 years, revered actor Yoshi Oida returns to the Japan Society stage in his solo tour de force, Interrogations: Words of the Zen Masters. Interrogations is a comedic work depicting a test given by a Zen master to one of his students. The student must answer a series of questions framed in koans (riddles that defy rational thought) correctly in order to "graduate" (e.g. "How does a man who has climbed to the top of a pole go farther?"). The test continues for several days, designed to determine if the student has reached enlightenment.

Since its premiere in 1979 at the Avignon Festival, this one-man play with live musical accompaniment - "part theater, part music, part movement and all religious philosophy," as described by John Rockwell in The New York Times - has been hailed as Oida's masterwork. It has been performed worldwide and re-staged numerous times, with recent stops this summer in Padua (Italy), Ossiach (Austria) and Barcelona (Spain). Oida's uproarious performance is accompanied live by Berlin-based experimental musician Dieter Trüstedt.

Notes Oida of the play, "During the performance of Interrogations, I ask the audience questions from the koans. In this case, there is no spiritual or philosophical objective, only an entertainment based on the gap between word and thought. As in the writings of Beckett or Ionesco. Obviously, there is no need for anyone to find the "right" answer, but the questions act as a thread linking the audience with the two performers. Together we move towards a moment of shared delight, towards a living theater."

Trained from early childhood in the traditional kyogen acting style of the Japanese noh theater, actor, director, teacher and writer Yoshi Oida is widely recognized for his 30-year collaboration with legendary British director Peter Brook. In 1968, Oida appeared in Brook's production of Shakespeare's The Tempest at The Roundhouse in London. Further collaborations included The Mahabharata (on stage in 1985 and film in 1988) and Conference of Birds and The Man Who.... Oida's work as part of Brook's Paris-based Centre Internationale de Création Théâtrale led to appearances around the world. Brook observed Oida's gifts as an actor stating, "Yoshi Oida shows how the mysteries and secrets of performance are inseparable from a precise, concrete and detailed science learned in the heat of experience. The vital lessons he passes on to us are told with such lightness and grace that typically the difficulties become invisible."

Discussing his style of theater Oida wrote, "I feel that there are two types of theatre. First, the circus. The Players are fantastic, acrobatic creatures employing all manner of effects. And then there is the type of theatre which is like a bus transporting the audience to a realm of their own imagination which they would not reach otherwise. That's the sort of theatre I do. A theatre of service."

Oida has written three seminal books on the art of the actor that have been translated into eight
languages: An Actor Adrift, The Invisible Actor and An Actor's Tricks. Oida has also appeared in films including Cannes Film Festival's Official Selection The Pillow Talk (1996) directed by Peter Greenaway.

In recent years, Oida has garnered international acclaim as a director of opera. In that role, his credits include productions at the National Theatre Prague (Czech Republic), Opéra de Rouen, Festival d'Aix- En-Provence and Opéra National de Lyon (France), Teatro Comunale di Bologna (Italy) and the Aldeburgh Festival (U.K.), to name a few. Among Oida's many honors, he was named Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, France (1992) and Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, France (2007). Japan Society presented Oida-directed Benjamin Britten's opera Curlew River in 2007 as part of the Society's 100th Anniversary. More info at www.yoshioida.com.

Interrogations is presented in conjunction with the exhibition, The Sound of One Hand: Paintings and Calligraphy by Zen Master Hakuin, at Japan Society Gallery, October 1-January 16.

 



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