Basil Twist's DOGUGAESHI Comes To Japan Society This September

Japan Society launches its 2024-2025 Performing Arts Season with Basil Twist’s Dogugaeshi, a 20th anniversary revival of Twist’s Bessie award-winning fusion of mind-bending contemporary puppetry and nearly extinct traditional puppetry techniques from Japan’s Awa region.

Set for 12 performances only, taking place September 11 – 19 at Japan Society (333 East 47th Street), Dogugaeshi kicks off the Fall Series Ningyo! A Parade of Puppetry, featuring a range of performances -- all drawn from the creative well of Japan’s rich ningyo (puppet) culture, each with live shamisen music.

Born as a Japan Society commission, Dogugaeshi, the award-winning phenomenon by genius puppeteer Basil Twist, is back in celebration of its 20th anniversary.  In this ever-innovative piece, audiences are taken on a gorgeous, intimate and abstract journey, where a mysterious white fox shepherds viewers through unfolding scenes of past and present Japan.  Inspired by a disappearing traditional stage mechanic from Japan’s Awa region called dogugaeshi, Twist has created fusuma screens with stunning painted imagery, which dance, slide, flip, conceal and reveal to pull audiences deeper into a brain-bending optical illusion.  Dogugaeshi is a cross-cultural collaboration with master shamisen player and experimental musician Yumiko Tanaka, whose multi-layered music collage embraces everything from traditional tunes to popular songs.  

This complex multidisciplinary piece employs dogugaeshi, a stage mechanism used in traditional Japanese folk puppetry in which dozens upon dozens of sliding screens and inverting doors, each one more elaborate and beautiful than the next, gradually open to a final palace tableau.  In 2003 and 2004, Basil Twist traveled to Japan to research puppetry traditions, most especially the dogugaeshi technique – an extremely rare and dying tradition practiced only in the Awa region. From his experiences in Japan, he recreated the dogugaeshi set-up with a team of four puppeteers (including himself), blending centuries of tradition with his own art.  The piece’s only figurative puppet, a meticulous recreation of a gorgeous white fox encountered by Twist while experiencing many traditional puppet theaters and plays on his travels in Japan, guides the audience through the ever-changing forest of screens.  In describing his inspiration for the piece, Twist remarks, “When I heard from several sources of a legendary 88 screen dogugaeshi, I knew that I had to do this piece with at least 88 screens to bridge this all but vanished art form into the 21st century.” 

Dogugaeshi enjoyed a world premiere at Japan Society in 2004 in conjunction with the 150th  Anniversary of the US-Japan Treaty, and has toured nationally and internationally ever since.   This commission has earned critical acclaim, and upon its premiere, Dogugaeshi was honored with The New York Innovative Theater Award, Bessie Award and UNIMA Award.  Through that auspicious debut as well as subsequent productions, this work has become an important part of Basil Twist’s celebrated repertory.  

Notable performances of Dogugaeshi include Japan Society’s centennial celebrations in 2007 and four-city tour in Japan, and the 60th anniversary of Japan Society’s Performing Arts Program in 2013, as part of a retrospective on Basil Twist’s career at the Le Festival Mondial Des Théâtres De Marionnettes in France, and, most recently, as a featured event at the Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival in 2022. The work has been performed throughout the US, Japan, Rome, France and the UK.  This “homecoming” for one of Basil Twist’s seminal works is a rare opportunity to witness this unique, internationally beloved piece in the intimate setting for which it was originally designed.

Basil Twist (Creator & Director/Puppeteer), originally from San Francisco, is a third-generation puppeteer.  Since coming to New York, he has garnered an international reputation through his imaginative experiments with materials, techniques and uses in both narrative and abstract works.  Basil’s original works range from productions of classic stories to abstract visualizations of orchestral music and are informed by puppetry traditions from around the world. Basil received a degree from the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts de la Marionnette (ESNAM) in Charleville-Mézières, France, where he was trained in set design, costume design, dramaturgy, music and acting.  Basil’s original work includes Symphonie Fantastique (1998) which featured abstract materials in a tank of water to simulate imagery & characters to music. He contributed to the magic of Alfonso Cuarón's Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, creating the Dementors.  Original shows also include Petrushka, Rite of Spring, Hansel & Gretel, Arias with a Twist, La Bella Dormente nel Bosco, Sisters Follies, A Streetcar Named Desire (La Comédie Française, also co-director), and most recently the two operas TITON et l'AURORE (Jean-Joseph Cassanéa de Mondonville's Titon et l'Aurore, with Basil Twist as stage director and William Christie as conductor, at The Opera Comique and Versailles), and The Book of Mountains and Seas by composer Huang Ruo and designer/director Basil Twist, which premiered in Copenhagen, New York and at Koorbiennale in Amsterdam.  His past honors include an Obie, Henry Hewes, Doris Duke Performing Artist, and Creative Capital Awards; multiple UNIMA and Bessie Awards, a Guggenheim fellowship and a MacArthur Fellowship. He is the puppetry designer and director for the Olivier Award winning My Neighbor Totoro which returns to the West End in 2025.  He is currently a Roth Visiting Scholar at Dartmouth.   Since 1999 he has served as Artistic Director of Dream Music Puppetry at HERE in New York City. 

Yumiko Tanaka (Musical Direction/Shamisen Improvisation/Sound Design) received an MA in Musicology from Tokyo University of Fine Arts and Music.  In 1979, she began studying with gidayu recitation artist and Living National Treasure Komanosuke Takemoto, and the following year, she became a disciple of the late Kinshi Nozawa, a gidayu shamisen master and Living National Treasure in bunraku.  Equally at home as a performer of new music, her credits range from performing with orchestras such as the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic, to collaborating with pioneers in the world of jazz and experimental improvisation, including Kazumi Watanabe and Kazuhisa Uchihashi; Akira Sakata, Kazutoki Umezu and Ned Rothenberg; Kiyohiko Semba; Asuka Kaneko; Samm Bennet and David Moss;   Carl Stone; John Zorn; Elliott Sharp; and Butch Morris.  Tanaka has founded and participated in several contemporary music groups, including the traditional Japanese instrumental ensemble Pro Musica Nipponia, originally led by the late composer Minoru Miki; HANIWA ALL STARS led by Kiyohiko Senba; and the band Ground-Zero, led by turntable and guitar player Yoshihide Otomo.  She has performed in numerous notable venues, including Avery Fisher and Carnegie Halls, actively collaborated on several other acclaimed stage works such as Heiner Goebbels’ Hashirigaki, and the Taiwanese/ Japanese multimedia work Nami no shitanimo miyako no saburafuzo, and regularly tours around the world for collaborative and solo performances.  She is the editor of “Marugoto Shamisen no Hon (Book of Shamisen)” and co-author of “schola vol. 14: Traditional Music of Japan”, supervised by Ryuichi Sakamoto.  She received a fellowship from the Asian Cultural Council, which supported her residency in New York City in 2006-07, and served as the 2008 Agency for Cultural Affairs Overseas Training Special Dispatch for Performing Arts in New York.  She is a former associate professor at Hyogo University of Education, and is currently a joint researcher at the Research Centre for Traditional Japanese Music at the Kyoto City University of Arts.

Performances take place September 11 – 19 at Japan Society as follows:

Wednesday, September 11 at 7:30pm (Followed by a Private Gathering for Artists & Members)

Thursday, September 12 at 7:30pm (Followed by an Artist Q&A)

Friday, September 13 at 2:30pm & 7:30pm

Saturday, September 14 at 2:30pm & 7:30pm

Sunday, September 15 at 2:30pm & 7:30pm

Tuesday; September 17 at 7:30pm

Wednesday, September 18 at 2:30pm & 7:30pm

Thursday, September 19 at 7:30pm

Tickets: $58/$44 Japan Society members.  *Limited to 75 per performance; general seating. Note: New York-based shamisen musician Yoko Reikano Kimura will perform for the matinee shows. Yumiko Tanaka will perform for evening shows.

Following Dogugaeshi, the Fall 2024 Series Ningyo! A Parade of Puppetry continues with National Bunraku Theater (October 3 – 5) produced by Japan’s historic National Theatre, bringing their authoritative bunraku puppetry theater to New York City for the first time in over 30 years with a double-bill of dramatic classic scenes from the bunraku tradition with a full ensemble of master puppeteers and musicians.  In addition to traditionally crafted puppets and props, part of this performance features an elaborate projection-mapped backdrop designed by Kazuo Oga, art director for such internationally-acclaimed anime films as Studio Ghibli’s My Neighbor Totoro and Princess Mononoke.  Arriving next in the Series is the world premiere of Shinnai Meets Puppetry (November 7 – 9), a double bill of two enchanting Japanese fables uniting rustic and deeply expressive shinnai-bushi storytelling music with innovative contemporary rod, hand and shadow puppetry techniques.  

Completing the Series (December 12 & 13), The Benshi Tradition and the Silver Screen: A Japanese Puppetry Spin-off links the legacy of bunraku to Japan’s silent film tradition of the benshi, with modern benshi star Ichiro Kataoka and shamisen musician Sumie Kaneko joining forces across two separate screenings of silent samurai classics. 

This season’s series Ningyo! A Parade of Puppetry delivers a compelling roster of new works and noteworthy returns.  The world premiere of Basil Twist’s Dogugaeshi at Japan Society in 2004 marked the first production from Japan Society’s Artistic Director Yoko Shioya at the helm of the Performing Arts Program.  Since that auspicious introduction, she has continued to spotlight the accomplished and richly varied art form of puppet theater, with the Society serving as a launchpad for countless artists, bringing their work to New York audiences and beyond.  Now, in this 20th anniversary season of leading Japan Society's Performing Arts program, Yoko Shioya reflects on the importance of puppetry, and on Japan’s place within this esteemed artform: “We should not forget the power of analog craft and sheer human artistry even when the world – and the stage – have become more and more reliant on digital technology.  In Fall 2024, we celebrate Japan’s one-of-a-kind puppetry culture at the forefront of innovation, influence and emotional effect -- both within the endlessly inventive world of puppetry and within the entire universe of theater-making.”

Ningyo! A Parade of Puppetry takes place concurrently with the Japan Society Gallery's upcoming visual arts exhibition Bunraku Backstage (running October 4, 2024 through January 19, 2025), showcasing actual working puppets, props, instruments, and costumes on loan from the National Bunraku Theatre, Osaka alongside unexpected bunraku-inspired multimedia works by contemporary artist, exploring bunraku’s ongoing inspiration and influence in both performing and fine arts.

Japan Society’s 2024-2025 Performing Arts Season features a slate that includes contemporary theater, music, dance and more.  In Winter/Spring 2025, Japan Society presents the 20th Contemporary Dance Festival: Japan + East Asia (January 10 – 11), featuring ensembles from Japan, Taiwan and South Korea that represent the hottest contemporary dance coming out of East Asia today. Next, the French gothic horror Le Barbe Bleue gets a Harajuku makeover in Shuji Terayama’s Duke Bluebeard’s Castle (January 15 – 18), a mazelike retelling of the original tale and the Bartok adaptation by underground theater / filmmaker legend Shuji Terayama, further subverted into a wild burlesque showcase by the crossdressing, all-female company Project NYX, all directed by experimental theater veteran Kim Sujin. The season continues with the 19th Installment of the Annual Play Reading, presenting the play the far side of the moon (March 10), a haunting meditation on aging and loneliness in the modern era written by Izumi Kasagi and directed by NYC-based Skye Kowaleski.  Following the play reading, traditional Japanese instrument rockstars The Shakuhachi 5 have their North American debut concert in The Shakuhachi 5: Shakuhachi Vogue – A Visual Concert (May 16), featuring an impressive range of new and traditional works over four centuries to the backdrop of a mesmerizing video collage of ukiyo-e images, designed by visual artist Tei Blow. The season culminates with the music series Shun Ishiwaka: Jazz Transcending (June 5 & 7), in a set of two contrasting programs, one on each night, that place the rapidly transcendent star percussionist and musician Shun Ishiwaka front and center for American audiences.

All events take place at Japan Society, located at 333 East 47th Street in Manhattan.  Tickets on sale now.  For tickets and further detail, please visit www.japansociety.org or call 212-715-1258. (Non-member tickets include a $3 processing fee.)

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