James Saito Takes on One Night Only Reading of Award-Winning Bulgarian Play

The Elizabeth Kostova Foundation and The New Literature from Europe Festival present Madam Mishima by Elena Alexieva - one man show inspired by the death of one of Japan's great post-war novelists Yukio Mishima. The redaing will take place on December 12 at 7 p.m. at New York's Bulgarian Consulate.

Noted American actor James Saito (Bway: Golden Child, King and I; film and TV) will be essaying the role of cross-dressing Madam Mishima, a fictional character based on the writings and biography of Yukio Mishima who is revered today. Mishima committed seppuku in 1970 in the midst of a media frenzy.

Direction by Gwynn MacDonald (The Queen), artistic director of the Juilliard alumni-founded Juggernaut Theatre Co focusing on new work and classical plays by women. She has worked with many Eastern European plays and co-edited Contemporary Czech Drama (TCG/CUNY).

Madam Mishima received the top critics' awards and tremendous audience success in Bulgaria. The one-night staged reading will feature a live score by actor and performer Perry Yung who was awarded the Japan-US Friendship Commission Artist Fellowship in 2003 which allowed him to travel across Japan to study with masters of the shakuhachi zen flute.

There will be a post-show discussion, moderated by Melody Brooks, artistic director of New Perspectives Theater Company and Chair of the Gilder/Coigney International Theater Award.

ELENA ALEXIEVA (playwright) was born in Sofia, Bulgaria. She is the author of 11 poetry and fiction books, among them the short story collections Readers' Group 31, Who and Pets Syndicated, as well as the novels Knight, Devil and Death, The Nobel Laureate, and others. Her works have appeared in periodical publications and anthologies in English, French, Polish, Spanish, etc. She is also the author of numerous plays, some of them produced at the National Theatre, Theatre 199, Plovdiv Theatre, etc. and published in two volumes, Angel Fire (2014) and Victims of Love (2015). She is the winner of the Helikon Prize for modern Bulgarian fiction, the Askeer and Ikar national awards for modern Bulgarian drama, and the Award of the Society of Independent Theatre Critics in Bulgaria.

Gwynn MacDonald (director) has directed or produced theater, television, film and radio receiving Ace (VH1) and Emmy nominations (CBS), and Radio's Gracie Award. She is the artistic director of the Juilliard alumni-founded Juggernaut Theatre Co., and currently working with playwright Matt Widman, and the team of Cheryl Davis and Randall David Cook. Gwynn directed The First 100 Years: The Professional Female Playwright exploring the lives/works of women who wrote for the 17th & 18th English stage. She contributed "Engaging Social Issues, Expressing a Political Outlook" to Women Writing Plays: Three Decades of the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, and co-directed Eastern European Playwrights: Women Write the New featuring plays by women from Eastern and Central Europe. She is a Princeton grad, Drama League Fellow, and a member of the LPTW, LCT Lab, SDC and the Shakespeare Society.

James Saito (actor) is an American actor of stage, motion pictures, and television. Saito has appeared in numerous stage productions, with early career work at the Asian American theatre company East West Players in Los Angeles. On Broadway he has appeared in The King and I, and David Henry Hwang's Golden Child. He won an Obie Award in 2007 for his performance in Julia Cho's Durango at The Public Theater in New York City. Saito also played in films like The Devil's Advocate, Home Alone 3, Pearl Harbor. His TV credits include M*A*S*H, MacGyver, Law & Order, Miami Vice and Sex and the City.

Perry Yung (musician/performer) was awarded the Japan-US Friendship Commission Artist Fellowship in 2003 which allowed him to travel across Japan to study with masters of the shakuhachi zen flute. In 2014, he received an Asian Cultural Council Artist Award for research into historical instruments and original flute music of the Komuso zen monks. As an actor, Perry has been a member of the Great Jones Repertory Company of La MaMa Theater in New York City since 1993. He recently toured through Italy, Portugal, Croatia, Slovenia and Austria with the Great Jones Co. in Pylades, directed by Ivica Buljan. On television, he is mostly known as Ping Wu in The Knick, directed by Steven Soderbergh.

MELODY BROOKS (producer and director) who founded the New Perspectives Theatre Company. Its mission and goals are a result of her long experience working in the Off- and Off-Off Broadway arenas. She received the Spirit of Hope Award in 2015 from Esperanza Theatre Company for her work with and support of women theatre artists. She is a co-founder of 50/50 in 2020: Parity for Women Theatre Artists, and a member of the Board of Directors of the League of Professional Theatre Women. She serves as co-chair of the LPTW Gilder-Coigney International Theatre Award, the only award of its kind given every three years to a non-US citizen woman theatre practitioner living and working abroad.

For more information visit ekf.bg.