Butoh-Meets-Shakespeare Show HIDE YOUR FIRES Adds Performance at United Solo

Japanese Butoh dance breathes new life into a tale of Lady Macbeth, as a part of United Solo Theatre Festival at Theatre Row (The Studio Theatre), 410 W. 42nd St., New York City, in an added performance on Sunday, Nov. 5th at 6 p.m. (original show slot, Oct. 3rd at 7:30pm, was sold out).

United Solo, the world's largest solo theatre festival is in its 8th season at Theatre Row in New York City. United Solo featured nearly 800 theatre productions from all over the world. Yokko, the Japanese Butoh & Theatre artist, and her team have received several awards through their last work, Butoh Medea: (Best One-Woman Show, Best Choreography, Best lighting Design, Best Costume Design, Best Physical Theatre Show). Butoh Medea has been touring nationally and internationally since 2015. Meanwhile, the team has been developed the new show based on a story of Lady Macbeth.

Hide Your Fires brings the audience alongside the accursed spirit of Lady Macbeth to experience her nightmare of stifled ambition, unfulfilled desire, and ultimate loss. Telling the story solely through her perspective, this production fuses Japanese Butoh dance, movement, and various texts to take you inside the mind and body of one of Shakespeare's most famous villains. Director: Brian Rhinehart. Playwright: Sean Michael Welch. Costume Design: Deepsikha Chatterjee. Lighting Design: Derek Van Heel. Sound Design: RGS with Jorge Olivo. Movement Consultant: Jordan Rosin.

Yokko (Performer, Choreographer, Adapter) is an actor, Butoh & Theatre artist from Nagoya, Japan. She has acted in, devised and choreographed a variety of local and international shows, having won several awards, including "Best One-Woman Show", "Best Choreography" and "Best Physical Theatre Show" for Butoh Medea (United Solo 2014-2015 at Theatre Row). Butoh Medea was selected to perform in Warsaw, Poland. (United Solo Europe 2015, Teatre Syrena), toured Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2015, nominated The Asian Arts Award. It has been presented at several Universities in USA, Atelier Teatro Fisico (Turin, Italy), and MONOFEST'17 at Tiyatro Medresesi (Izmir, Turkey). Other Solo show: BALDY (CRS, United Solo 2013, HFF 2013, Fringe NYC 2012). Yokko also acted in several of local and international films, one of which is the Student Academy Winner film, Cloud-Kumo (2016). She is the associate artistic director of The Ume Group as well as the artistic director of Ren Gyo Soh in NYC. MFA in Acting (The Actors Studio). www.yokko-online.com

Brian Rhinehart (Director) is an actor, director, professor and Fulbright scholar. An expert in devised theatre and collaborative playmaking, he has worked as a freelance theatre director in Florida and New York for the last 19 years. He is also a critically acclaimed actor, who has performed in over fifty productions in New York, Germany, and Florida. The plays he has written or co-written have been seen in the New York International Fringe Festival and a variety of Off-Off Broadway venues. brianrhinehart.info

Sean Michael Welch (Playwright, Co-Adapter) was awarded the 1999 Kennedy Center / American College Theatre Festival John Cauble Short Play Award for Earl the Vampire, and won the 2000 KC/ACTF Region III Ten-Minute Play Competition for Charleston's Finger. Past productions of his work include Slab, Try Not to Step on the Naked Man,Rise Up You Bloody Animals, All an Act, Staged Reading, and Boise, Idaho. His published work includes Earl the Vampire (Samuel French, 2000), Boise, Idaho (Zoetrope: All-Story, 2000 and Playscripts, Inc., 2012), and Try Not to Step on the Naked Man (Zoetrope: All-Story, 2002). His play All An Act premiered at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2012. His novel 1897: Aliens! Zombies! Vampires! was released in 2015.

Tickets for Hide Your Fires at United Solo are $35 (plus a $2.25 theatre restoration charge) and are available at the Theatre Row box office, telecharge.com, or by phone at (212) 239-6200.

Photo Credit: Derek Van Heel