Japan Society Presents OUR PLANET Reading, 2/6

Japan Society will present a staged reading of Our Planet by Japan's celebrated young writer Yukio Shiba, directed by OBIE award winner Alec Duffy.  As part of Japan Society's Performing Arts Season spanning Fall 2011 through Spring 2012, Our Planet is a presentation of the Society's annual Play Reading Series of contemporary Japanese plays in English translation.  The annual Play Reading Series reflects a continued commitment to introduce the wide range of contemporary Japanese plays to American audiences, while seeding future collaborations between Japanese plays/playwrights and American actors and directors.  Our Planet is Japan Society's 7th Annual Play Reading.  This one-night-only event takes place Monday, February 6 at 7:30 PM at Japan Society (333 East 47th Street). 

Of the infinite stars in the galaxy, a young boy fixates on one located 10,000 light years away, that has long perished by the time of the boy's discovery.  Imagine, at the moment the boy spots his star, he is actually an old man being watched by someone on a faraway star.  Such are the mind-bending ideas whirling through Our Planet, a tale by the young Japanese playwright Yukio Shiba in which the minutia of an average Japanese family's everyday life is juxtaposed with galactic events of the Earth's birth and death.  Inspired by Thornton Wilder's Our Town, Shiba's Our Planet (Wagahoshi) won the most prestigious Kishida Kunio Drama Award in 2010.  New York-based director Alec Duffy helms this reading, leading a cast of American actors: Ben Beckley (Teacher), Eliza Bent (Sister), Nikki Calonge ("I" Terri), Ryan Eggensperger (Boy), Mia Katigbak (Grandma), Juliana Francis Kelly (Mother), Albert Christmas (Father) and Paula Wilson (Luna).  English translation by Katsunori and Miharu Obata.  Playwright Yukio Shiba will join a post-reading Q&A by live-stream video broadcast from Japan.

Play Reading director Alec Duffy shares, "With Our Planet, Yukio Shiba force-feeds the audience giant perspective -- pulling us out, out, out, until we are circling our own lives on Earth.  And then he burrows down into the very smallest atom of our quotidian lives, bringing insight into the smallest social gesture.  The audience is swept up and buckled down in a thrilling blur of time and space, visiting lives on Earth and imagining alternatives to those lives -- fast forwarding, rewinding, jumping through millennia and also settling in for birthday cake around the kitchen table.  Shiba is a playwright with a ferocious imagination.  He bursts our world, eschewing all rules of time and space, and in the process brings new insight into human habits and foibles.  He's a thrilling young playwright from whom I anticipate great things."  

Playwright Yukio Shiba was born in Aichi Prefecture in 1982.  Shiba is a member of the directing department of the Seinendan theater company.  He won the 2nd Sendai Theater Town Playwriting Award for Dodomino, a play written in 2004 while Shiba was a student in Nihon University's College of Art.  In October 2009, he formed the company "Mamagoto" which launched that year with a production of Our Planet.  His works for this company are characterized by subtleties of the seemingly unexceptional happenings of everyday life expressed in carefully selected words and then brought to stage with concepts from non-theatrical sources, such as the employment of loops and samplings.  His works Walking (Ayumi), a play in which the actors walk continuously throughout the performance, and Repetition and Continuation (Hanpuku katsu Renzoku), in which a mechanism of looped monodrama is used to portray a large family, are examples of the methods he utilizes to depict everyday life.  Shiba and his company remain active throughout Japan, participating in Aichi Prefecture's first Triennial in 2010 (the first international arts festival in Aichi Prefecture), a playwriting seminar in Kani City, Gifu Prefecture and directing at the Iwaki Sogo High School in Fukushima Prefecture.  Shiba also writes columns, essays and TV dramas.

Director Alec Duffy founded Hoi Polloi, a collaborative theater company for which he is Artistic Director, in 2007.  His recent directing credits include John Cassavetes' Shadows (The Collapsable Hole, Brooklyn) and Murder in the Cathedral (The Church of St. Joseph, Brooklyn).  He is one of the three co-creators of the OBIE-winning Three Pianos, which played at New York Theatre Workshop and American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, MA.  With Hoi Polloi, he conceived and directed The less we talk and Dysphoria (Ontological Theater, NYC) and The Top Ten People of the Millennium Sing Their Favorite Schubert Lieder (Bank Street Theater, NYC and the Victory Gardens Theater, Chicago).  Duffy is a Drama League Directing Fellow and was selected for the 2007–09 NEA/TCG Career Development Program for Directors.

About Japan Society's Performing Arts Program: Since the inception of the Performing Arts Program in 1953, Japan Society has introduced more than 600 of Japan's finest performing arts to an extensive American audience.  Programs range from the traditional arts of noh, kyogen, bunraku and kabuki to cutting-Edge Theater, dance and music.  The Program also commissions new works, produces national tours, organizes residency programs for American and Japanese artists and develops and distributes educational programs.  "At once diverse and daring, the program stands toe to toe with some of the most comprehensive cultural exchange endeavors today" (Back Stage). 

The current Fall 2011/Spring 2012 Performing Arts Season presents visionary work in theater, music and dance.  The season launched with the Shizuoka Performing Arts Center (SPAC) production of Medea interpreted and directed by Satoshi Miyagi, and continued with J-Music Ride featuring Cibo Matto & Yu Sakai and Turntable Duo: Otomo Yoshihide + Christian Marclay, part of the Performa 11 biennial. 

Japan Society was recently represented by two productions in Under The Radar Festival 2012: Hideki Noda's THE BEE and chelfitsch Theater Company's Hot Pepper, Air Conditioner, and the Farewell Speech.  Spring ushers in two premier dance events: Kabuki Dance featuring the famed traditional Japanese dancer Bando Kotoji with live musicians (March), and Bessie Award winner Kota Yamazaki/Fluid Hug-Hug's (glowing) (April), arriving at Japan Society during a world premiere tour (co-commissioned by Japan Society and The Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center - EMPAC).  Also due in Spring 2012 is the hotly-anticipated annual open house event j-CATION, offering a full day of events, performances, workshops, food and drinks, all organized around a specific theme.

About Japan Society: Founded in 1907, Japan Society is a world-class, multidisciplinary hub for global leaders, artists, scholars, educators, and English and Japanese speaking audiences.  At the Society, more than 100 events each year feature sophisticated, topically relevant presentations of Japanese art and culture and open, critical dialogue on issues of vital importance to the U.S., Japan and East Asia.  An American nonprofit, nonpolitical organization, the Society cultivates a constructive, resonant and dynamic relationship between the people of the U.S. and Japan.
 
Tickets & Information
Tickets are $10/$8 Japan Society members.  Tickets can be purchased by calling the Box Office at (212) 715-1258 or in person at Japan Society (M-F 11:00 AM–6:00 PM and Sat-Sun 11:00 AM–5:00 PM).  Japan Society is located at 333 East 47th Street, between First and Second Avenues (accessible by the 4/5/6 at 42nd Street-Grand Central Station or the E and V at Lexington Avenue and 53rd Street). 

For more information call (212) 832-1155 or visit www.japansociety.org.

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