Toshiki Okada News

The Martin E. Segal Theatre Center has announced the first weekly line-up of its new global series SEGAL TALKS.

As part of its current 2019-2020 Performing Arts Season, Japan Society presents a staged reading of Cooking Up, by Japanese playwright Shoko Matsumura, led by Brooklyn-based director Jordana De La Cruz, taking place Monday, March 30 at 7:30 PM at Japan Society (333 East 47th Street).  Cooking Up marks the 15th installment of the Society's annual Play Reading Series: Contemporary Japanese Plays in English Translation, introducing topical plays from emerging playwrights from Japan to artists and audiences in the U.S.  

NYU Skirball will present the North American premiere of Toshiki Okada/chelfitsch and Teppei Kaneuji's Eraser Mountain on Friday, February 28 and Saturday, February 29 at 7:30 pm at NYU Skirball Center. Eraser Mountain, performed in Japanese with English supertitles, considers how our present-day actions impact future generation and asks the question: a?oeWhat is our environmental responsibilities to future generations?a??

Since its founding in 1989, Ma-Yi Theater Company has distinguished itself as one of the country's leading incubators of new work shaping the national discourse about what it means to be Asian American today.

NYU Skirball's Winter/Spring 2020 season will open on Thursday, January 23 with a two-week run of the Wooster Group's acclaimed A PINK CHAIR (In Place of a Fake Antique), directed by Elizabeth LeCompte, and conclude with the New York premiere of the Requiem Pour L, a joyful music/dance meditation on life and death from Belgium's les ballets C de la B. The season reflects NYU Skirball's commitment to supporting and presenting today's most adventurous and creative artists working in dance, theater, music and visual arts.

Theatre Communications Group (TCG), the national organization for theatre, in association with Center for Fiction, will co-present Black Lives/White Gaze: Playwrights Jackie Sibblies Drury and Claudia Rankine in Conversation. 

Since its founding in 1989, Ma-Yi Theater Company has distinguished itself as one of the country's leading incubators of new work shaping the national discourse about what it means to be Asian American today. Building on the recent success of the Lortel Award-winner KPOP and Mike Lew's Teenage Dick, Ma-Yi is pleased to announce programming for its 30th anniversary season.

Theatre Arts & Performance Studies and Sock & Buskin present The Sonic Life of a Giant Tortoise by Toshiki Okada, translated by Aya Ogawa.

Lincoln Center Theater/LCT3 has announced that Gabby Beans, Marceline Hugot, and Ismenia Mendes will join Quincy Tyler Bernstine, Karen Kandel, and Lucy Taylor for the world premiere of MARYS SEACOLE, a new play by Jackie Sibblies Drury, directed by Lileana Blain-Cruz, at the Claire Tow Theater (150 West 65 Street).  MARYS SEACOLE will begin performances Saturday evening, February 9 and run for six weeks only through Sunday, March 24.  Opening night is Monday, February 25.

This winter, Lincoln Center Theater/LCT3 will produce the world premiere of MARYS SEACOLE, a new play by Jackie Sibblies Drury, directed by Lileana Blain-Cruz, at the Claire Tow Theater (150 West 65 Street).

If you go to see Alan Fieldan with JAMS' (which presumably stands for the names of the four actors, Jemima, Alan, Malachy and Sophie), Marathon at the Barbican, you'd do you well to remember an illuminating part of the blurb about the show:

In response to popular demand, Soho Rep. (Sarah Benson, Artistic Director; Cynthia Flowers, Executive Director) extends the world premiere of Jackie Sibblies Drury's Fairview, directed by Sarah Benson, through July 22. In Fairview, the Frasier family (MaYaa Boateng, Charles Browning, Roslyn Ruff, and Heather Alicia Simms) is gearing up for Grandma's birthday, and Beverly needs this dinner to be perfect. But the silverware's wrong, the radio's on the fritz, her sister Jasmine is drinking, her husband Dayton isn't helping, her daughter Keisha is a typical teenager, and her brother Tyrone might not show up at all!

The Play Company (PlayCo), led by Founding Producer Kate Loewald and Managing Director Robert G. Bradshaw, today announces the complete cast for Toshiki Okada's Time's Journey Through a Room, marking PlayCo's third collaboration with Okada, translator Aya Ogawa, and director Dan Rothenberg, May 10 - June 10, 2018. This haunting play, set in post-Fukushima Japan, will star three Japanese born performers, all of whom are now based in New York: Yuki Kawahisa (Honoka), Maho Honda (Arisa) and Kensaku Shinohara (Kazuki). The play is both an intimate examination of how we move forward from life-altering events, and a study of how we experience time, asking whether we can ever be alive to the present moment. 

Soho Rep. (Sarah Benson, Artistic Director; Cynthia Flowers, Executive Director) today announced that actor Charles Browning will take over for Lance Coadie Williams in the world premiere of Jackie Sibblies Drury's Fairview, which Soho Rep. Artistic Director Sarah Benson directs, and which the downtown Manhattan theater presents in association with Berkeley Repertory Theatre. Due to unforeseen personal circumstances, Williams is unable to continue.The production now runs at Soho Rep. June 2 - July 8, with opening now set for Sunday, June 17. 

The U.S. Premiere of Toshiki Okada's Time's Journey Through a Room opens this Sunday, May 20, at the Mezzanine Theatre at the A.R.T./New York Theatres. Presented by The Play Company (PlayCo), led by Founding Producer Kate Loewald and Managing Director Robert G. Bradshaw, Time's Journey Through a Room is PlayCo's third collaboration with Okada, translator Aya Ogawa and director Dan Rothenberg. This haunting play, set in Japan after the Fukushima disaster, stars the Japanese-born, New York based performers Yuki Kawahisa (Honoka), Maho Honda (Arisa) and Kensaku Shinohara (Kazuki). The play is both an intimate examination of how we move forward from life-altering events, and a study of how we experience time, asking whether we can ever be alive to the present moment. 

Soho Rep. (Sarah Benson, Artistic Director; Cynthia Flowers, Executive Director), in association with Berkeley Repertory Theatre, presents the world premiere of Jackie Sibblies Drury's Fairview, directed by Soho Rep. Artistic Director Sarah Benson, May 29 - July 1. Following her "inventive," "pulse-pounding" We Are Proud to Present…(The New York Times, Time Out New York, and New York Magazine Critics' Picks), Sibblies Drury returns to Soho Rep. with Fairview, a play that shows us that nothing's funnier than "family drama."

The Play Company (PlayCo), led by Founding Producer Kate Loewald and Managing Director Robert G. Bradshaw, today announces the complete cast for Toshiki Okada's Time's Journey Through a Room, marking PlayCo's third collaboration with Okada, translator Aya Ogawa, and director Dan Rothenberg, May 10 - June 10, 2018. This haunting play, set in post-Fukushima Japan, will star three Japanese born performers, all of whom are now based in New York: Yuki Kawahisa (Honoka), Maho Honda (Arisa) and Kensaku Shinohara (Kazuki). The play is both an intimate examination of how we move forward from life-altering events, and a study of how we experience time, asking whether we can ever be alive to the present moment. 

The Play Company (PlayCo), led by Founding Producer Kate Loewald and Managing Director Robert G. Bradshaw, presents Toshiki Okada's Time's Journey Through a Room, marking PlayCo's third collaboration with Okada, translator Aya Ogawa, and director Dan Rothenberg, May 10 - June 10, 2018. This haunting play, set in post-Fukushima Japan, is an intimate examination of how we move forward from life-altering events, and a study of how we experience time, asking whether we can ever be alive to the present moment.

'Distant Observer: Tokyo/New York Correspondence' is a collaboration between Japanese playwright/director Takeshi Kawamura and American playwright/director John Jesurun. The project is conceived as a play written and directed in collaborative partnership by both artists. Written in sequential chapters by each playwright, it combines two noted and formative artists of the same generation, both with distinct voices and significant work, in a deep creative conversation across cultures. Its plot follows a supposed murderer who reinvents himself, and is reinvented by circumstance, in a series of adventures in the Suicide Forest of Japan.  La MaMa will present the play's world premiere, directed by Jesurun, March 16 to April 1 in its Ellen Stewart Theatre, 66 East Fourth Street.

Playwright/performer Stacey Karen Robinson shares her new solo exploration mixing song, movement and her distinctive storytelling style. A seeker at the crossroads wrestles to be free; she shape shifts through the body, through the memory of many selves in a dynamic sojourn of heart & spirit.