Katsura Sunshine's Rakugo to Return to NY for Encore Performances This Fall
Executive producer Joe Trentacosta calls the storyteller a cultural bridge between Japan and America.
Rakugo master Katsura Sunshine will return for three encore performances of Katsura Sunshine's Rakugo as part of his US tour.
The newly announced New York performances are:
- Friday, October 9, 2026 at 7:00 PM
- Wednesday, December 9, 2026 at 7:00 PM
- Friday, January 8, 2027 at 7:00 PM
The performances offer New York audiences another chance to experience one of Japan's most distinctive theatrical traditions — delivered by one of its most unexpected ambassadors.
“We're incredibly proud to bring Katsura Sunshine and his apprentices across the United States and introduce more audiences to this extraordinary art form,” said Executive Producer Joe Trentacosta. “Rakugo may be 400 years old, but the laughter feels completely contemporary. Sunshine has created a wonderfully funny and entertaining cultural bridge between Japan and America—and audiences don't need to know anything about rakugo to have a fantastic time.”
Katsura Sunshine was born in Toronto and studied Classics at the University of Toronto, specializing in Ancient Greek theatre, before moving to Japan in 1999 to immerse himself in traditional Japanese performance. In 2008, his life changed when he was accepted as an apprentice to legendary rakugo master Katsura Bunshi VI. The apprenticeship was not simply acting training. Rakugo is traditionally handed down directly from master to apprentice, with students learning stories, technique, etiquette, stagecraft, and centuries of tradition through years of close study, with days filled with cleaning, folding, and setting up teh stage. Sunshine completed that rigorous apprenticeship and became the first Western performer in the Kamigata rakugo tradition, the form of rakugo associated with Osaka.
Today, he has performed for audiences across North America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia, bringing rakugo to people who may never have encountered the art form before.
And he has done it without turning rakugo into something Western.
Sunshine's approach is precisely the opposite: preserve what makes the form uniquely Japanese while demonstrating how universal great storytelling can be.
Sunshine's mission in the United States now extends beyond performing the art form. He is also helping ensure its future. For centuries, rakugo has survived because masters take on apprentices who learn the art directly from them before eventually becoming professional storytellers themselves. Sunshine is now extending that tradition to America, becoming the first rakugo master to establish apprenticeships in the United States.His apprentices include Katsura Sunny, the first American-born rakugo apprentice, along with Katsura Moonlight and Katsura Sunflower.
It marks an extraordinary new chapter for an art form once transmitted almost exclusively within Japan: a new generation of rakugo performers is now being cultivated on American soil.
What began as Sunshine's personal journey into a Japanese tradition has grown into something considerably larger — an effort to build a lasting international home for rakugo while protecting the traditions that have sustained it for more than four centuries.
The production is presented by Joe Trentacosta, Yoshitaka Tanaka, and Artistic Producer Marie Fukuda, co-producer Yumi Shinozaki, with set design by Mikiko Suzuki MacAdams and general management by LDK Productions.
For more information about Rakugo, Katusra Sunshine and the US Tour, please visit: www.Rakugo.lol
For Tickets to the performances at New World Stages, please visit: www.Telecharge.com or call 212-239-6200.
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