Photos: Theater Breaking Through Barriers Takes Part In The 15th BIRD International Theatre Festival In Japan

Theater Breaking Through Barriers the only professional Off-Broadway theater company dedicated to advancing artists and developing audiences of people with disabilities, recently took a contingent of 14 artists to Japan's Tottori Prefecture to participate in the 15th BIRD International Theatre Festival. See photos from their trip here.

Makoto Nakashima, Artistic Director of Japan's BIRD Theatre, and host of the international theatre festival learned about Theater Breaking Through Barriers in 2014 and invited the company to travel to Japan to present its work. TBTB was the first theater organization from the United States invited to this festival. Since that time, TBTB has traveled to Japan in 2017 and 2018, each time expanding its presence with additional performances in Tokyo, Nara, and Niigata. In late 2019, just before the COVID shutdown, Nakashima reached out once again to TBTB's Artist Director Nicholas Viselli to discuss the possibility of an artistic collaboration between TBTB and the BIRD theatre's offshoot company, the FREEDOM Theatre, which also integrates disabled and non-disabled performers onstage. Although COVID suspended all international travel to Japan in 2020 and 2021, TBTB continued to develop its collaboration online. Finally, after over two years, the two companies will finally connect live and in person at this year's festival.

The company left for Japan on September 5, a week before the three-week festival began, to take part in workshops and rehearse - a first-of-its-kind collaboration, as members of both TBTB and The FREEDOM Theatre presented four original short plays created by TBTB playwrights, Stuart Green, Tatiana G. Rivera and Jeff Tabnick. The plays were performed by both American and Japanese actors with disabilities and performed simultaneously in English and Japanese.

They also presented their acclaimed production of Brecht on Brecht, which Theatermania called "An ensemble of nine performers of various abilities and disabilities, cheerfully obliterates the notion that you have to be completely able-bodied in order to appear in musical theater. Brecht certainly would have dug that."

The artistic contingent included Director Nicholas Viselli; Stage Managers Christine Lemme and Arthur Atkinson; Production Manager Eric Nightengale; Playwright, Tatiana G. Rivera; Performers: Scott Barton, Stephen Drabicki, Ann Flanigan, Stuart Green, Bree Klauser, Dionne McClaine-Freeney, Ann Marie Morelli, Pamela Sabaugh, and Gaia Visnar.

TBTB would not be able to make this trip without the generous support of: The Japan - United States Friendship Commission and the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation/USArtists International.

Theater Breaking Through Barriers (TBTB) is the only professional Off-Broadway theater company dedicated to advancing artists and developing audiences of people with disabilities and altering the misconceptions surrounding disability by proving that disability does not affect the quality or integrity of art or artists. TBTB began in 1979 as Theater By the Blind and is celebrating the 43rd Season! In 2008 the name became Theater Breaking Through Barriers, to include artists with all disabilities yet retaining the "TBTB" acronym and becoming the preeminent Off-Broadway Theater for people with disabilities, hailed by The New York Times as "an extraordinary troupe designed to defy expectations" and The New York Post as "quite simply one of the most enjoyable companies in the country."

For more information about the TBTB Writers' Workshop and any Theater Breaking Through Barriers' programs and upcoming productions, visit tbtb.org

Bree Klauser, Yuta Itani, Ann Marie Morelli, Mahiro Miyoshi

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