Japan Society Presents Haruki Murakami's SLEEP, Beginning Tonight

As part of its 2015-2016 Performing Arts Season, Japan Society presents Haruki Murakami's SLEEP, in a first look, work-in-progress showing from Ripe Time and PlayCo. This theatrical event will have three performances only at Japan Society: Tonight, February 26 at 7:30pm; Saturday, February 27 at 7:30pm; Sunday, February 28 at 2:30pm.

The Obie Award-winning theater companies Ripe Time and The Play Company offer a physical theater piece adapted from Haruki Murakami's short story SLEEP (Nemuri), in which insomnia upends the routine life of a young Japanese housewife, offering a window into a haunting and beautiful new world. This visually immersive work features a kaleidoscopic mix of choreography, projection design and original score performed live.

To adapt and devise this new theater piece, New York-based director Rachel Dickstein (Artistic Director, Ripe Time) leads a trailblazing creative team of women including Japanese-American playwright Naomi Iizuka and designers Mimi Lien (Set), Ilona Somogyi (Costumes), Jiyoun Chang (Lighting) and Hannah Wasileski (Projections). This event is part of Japan Society's Women on the Rise series, a new long-term initiative bringing to the fore programming and content related to women, and shining a light on women who are pushing boundaries and expanding horizons within their field.

SLEEP is performed by Akiko Aizawa, Brad Culver, Takemi Kitamura, Paula McGonagle, Jiehae Park and Saori Tsukada ), and features an original score performed live by the NewBorn Trio (Katie Down, Miguel Frasconi, Jeffrey Lependorf). Sound Design is by Miguel Frasconi.

Haruki Murakami was born in Kyoto, Japan, in 1949. He grew up in Kobe and then moved to Tokyo, where he attended Waseda University. After college, Murakami opened a small jazz bar, which he and his wife ran for seven years. His first novel, Hear the Wind Sing, won the Gunzou Literature Prize for budding writers in 1979. He followed that success with two sequels, Pinball, 1973 and A Wild Sheep Chase, which together form "The Trilogy of the Rat." Murakami is also the author of the novels Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World; Norwegian Wood; Dance Dance Dance, South of the Border, West of the Sun; The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle; Sputnik Sweetheart; Kafka on the Shore; After Dark; 1Q84 and Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage. He has written three short story collections: The Elephant Vanishes; After the Quake and Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman; and an illustrated novella, The Strange Library. Additionally, Murakami has written several works of nonfiction. After the Hanshin earthquake and the Tokyo subway sarin gas attack in 1995, he interviewed surviving victims, as well as members of the religious cult responsible. From these interviews, he published two nonfiction books in Japan, which were selectively combined to form Underground. He also wrote a series of personal essays on running, entitled What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. The most recent of his many international literary honors is the Jerusalem Prize, whose previous recipients include J. M. Coetzee, Milan Kundera and V. S. Naipaul. Murakami's work has been translated into more than fifty languages.

Naomi lizuka's plays include 36 Views; Polaroid Stories; Anon(ymous); Language of Angels; Aloha, Say the Pretty Girls; Tattoo Girl; Concerning Strange Devices from the Distant West; At the Vanishing Point; and Skin. Her plays have been produced at theaters nationwide including Berkeley Rep, the Goodman, the Guthrie, the Kennedy Center, Cornerstone, the Huntington, Actors' Theatre of Louisville, the Public Theater, and Soho Rep. lizuka is an alumna of New Dramatists and the recipient of a PEN/Laura Pels Award, an Alpert Award, a Joyce Foundation Award, a Whiting Writers' Award, a Stavis Award from the National Theatre Conference, a PEN Center USA West Award for Drama, and Princeton University's Hodder Fellowship. Her play Good Kids is the first play commissioned by the Big Ten Consortium and was produced at six of the Big Ten schools this past season. Iizuka heads the MFA Playwriting program at the University of California, San Diego.

Rachel Dickstein devised, choreographed and directed the world premieres of The World is Round (BAM-Fisher, Obie Award, Special Citation, Finalist for 2014 Richard Rodgers Award), Septimus and Clarissa (Joe A. Callaway, Drama Desk, Drama League nominations) at the Baruch Performing Arts Center, Fire Throws at 3LD ART & Technology Center, Innocents at the Ohio Theatre (based on Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth, Betrothed at the Ohio Theatre), The Secret of Steep Ravines at P.S. 122. Other recent directing projects include Kamala Sankaram/ Susan Yankowitz's Thumbprint (Prototype, LA Opera 2017), Vijay Iyer and Mike Ladd's In What Language? (Asia Society, REDCAT, PICA). She has been an Artist-in-Residence at the Drama League, a nominee for the 2014 Alan Schneider Award and the 2014 and 2015 Doris Duke Impact Award. She is the recipient of commissions from Center Theatre Group, NYSCA, the Rockefeller MAP Fund, P.S. 122 and the NEA/TCG Director's Fellowship. BA, Yale College. Visiting Assistant Professor at the Conservatory of Theatre Arts at Purchase College, SUNY.

Ripe Time, is an Obie-winning theater company led by director and deviser Rachel Dickstein. Ripe Time develops and presents ensemble-based theater with rich language, visual power and physical rigor. The company tells stories from the inside out, using the language of memory, imagination and associative thought to trace how women negotiate identity in the face of cultural constrictions. Inspired by the most searing writing and cinema of the past, Ripe Time creates original multidisciplinary events for the 21st century celebrating women's dreams and awakenings. Since 2000, Ripe Time has premiered six large-scale ensemble works that have received three Obie Awards and nominations from the Drama Desk, the Drama League and the Joe A. Callaway Award for outstanding direction. Its work has been presented at BAM-Fisher, the Baruch Performing Arts Center, The JCC in Manhattan, 3LD Art & Technology Center, the Ohio Theatre, P.S. 122, the Clark Studio Theater at Lincoln Center, and La MaMa, ETC, Ko Festival , Voice and Vision and Watermill. Designs from two of the company's productions were part of the 2015 USITT Prague Quadrennial, an international exhibit featuring excellence in design from across the globe. Artistic Director Rachel Dickstein received the 2015 LPTW Lucille Lortel Award in honor of her work with Ripe Time.

The Play Company (Kate Loewald, Founding Producer; Lauren Weigel, Executive Producer) is an OBIE Award-winning, international theater for new writing currently celebrating its 15th season. PlayCo produces adventurous new plays from the U.S. and abroad, to engage New Yorkers in a dynamic global experience of contemporary theater and expand the American repertoire. The company's international programming reflects and responds to its NYC home, and the globally connected way people live now. PlayCo links American theater with world theater, American artists with the global creative community, and American audiences with a whole world of plays. PlayCo's28 productions include premieres from Japan, Sweden, Mexico, Poland, Scotland, England, Romania, Germany, Russia, India, France, Northern Ireland and the United States. Designs from its productions have been featured in American Theatre Magazine and CHANCE. The company's artistic programs provide a range of opportunities and resources to create new work at all stages of development. The Play Company was created by Kate Loewald, Mike Ockrent and Jack Temchin.

Japan Society's 2015-2016 Performing Arts Season, featuring works by visionary artists in dance, music and theater, launched in September with the very well-received Traditional Dance from Okinawa, with Live Music. The season continued with the New York debut of Charan-Po-Rantan, Concert + Party (October 29), and followed with a dance event, the North American Premiere of Shuji Onodera's Spectator (November 13 & 14). Next, the Society presented two theater events: A Night of Kyogen with Mansaku Nomura and Mansaku-no-Kai Kyogen Company (December 10-12); and God Bless Baseball, by playwright & director Toshiki Okada, a North American Premiere, as part of The Public Theater's Under The Radar Festival. Following Sleep, the season continues the Annual Play Reading Series: Contemporary Japanese Plays In English Translation with Girl X by Suguru Yamamoto, directed by Charlotte Brathwaite (March 21). The season concludes in Spring 2016 with Sound Exploration with Otomo Yoshihide/FEN (May 14).

Founded in 1907, Japan Society is a multidisciplinary hub for global leaders, artists, scholars, educators, and English and Japanese-speaking audiences. At the Society, more than 100 events each year feature sophisticated, topically relevant presentations of Japanese art and culture and open, critical dialogue on issues of vital importance to the U.S., Japan and East Asia. An American nonprofit, nonpolitical organization, the Society cultivates a constructive, resonant and dynamic relationship between the people of the U.S. and Japan.

Since the inception of the Performing Arts Program in 1953, Japan Society has introduced nearly 700 of Japan's finest performing arts to an extensive American audience. Programs range from the traditional arts of noh, kyogen, bunraku and kabuki to cutting-edge theater, dance and music. The Program also commissions new works to non-Japanese artists, produces national tours, organizes residency programs for American and Japanese artists and develops and distributes educational programs. "At once diverse and daring, the program stands toe to toe with some of the most comprehensive cultural exchange endeavors today." --Back Stage.

Sleep plays at Japan Society as follows: Friday, February 26 at 7:30pm; Saturday, February 27 at 7:30pm; Sunday, February 28 at 2:30pm. Performance runs approximately 75 minutes. Tickets: $20/$18 Japan Society members. MetLife Meet-the-Artists Reception follows the performance on Friday, February 26. Tickets & Information: Tickets for performances and related events at Japan Society can be purchased by calling the Box Office at 212-715-1258 or in person at Japan Society (M-F 11:00am - 6:00pm and Sat-Sun 11:00am - 5:00pm). Japan Society is located at 333 East 47th Street, between First and Second Avenues (accessible by the 4/5/6 at 42nd Street-Grand Central Station or the E at Lexington Avenue and 53rd Street). For more information, call 212-832-1155 or visit www.japansociety.org.

SLEEP is contained within The Elephant Vanishes: Stories by Haruki Murakami published by Random House in various formats and is available for purchase at major bookseller and online retailers.

SLEEP is developed in association with Center Theatre Group with support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

This program was developed at The Ground Floor at Berkeley Repertory Theatre in June 2015.

To post a comment, you must register and login.