Performance/ Recycling: Washi Tales
September 22, 2011
8:00 pm
Bing Theater at Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Tickets are $25. (323) 857-6010
A talk with Kyoko Ibe, stage installation designer, will begin at 7:00 pm before the performance. This talk will be led by Hollis Goodal, Curator of Japanese art at LACMA.
The performers includes Japan’s Intangible Cultural Treasure Noh otsuzumi drummer Shonosuke Okura.
Recycling: Washi Tales
Kyoko Ibe, designer
Elise Thoron, writer and director
Tale 1: Najio River
This poignant legend from the Edo period tells of the papermaker and her daughter, who journey from their village of Echizen to find her husband, who had disappeared suddenly. This tale is based on a contemporary short story by Tsutomu Minakami translated by Claire Cuccio.
Tale 2: Sen no Rikyu
Sen no Rikyu, a 16th-century tea master and aide to the powerful Shogun Hideyoshi, designs a tea house with recycled paper walls in defiance of the shogun’s power.
Tale 3: Hogosho
“Hogosho” (scrap paper) springs from Kyoko Ibe’s most recent work, a series of panels incorporating handwritten documents from the a 19th –century village in northern Japan that no longer exists.
Tale 4: Fujiwara Tamiko
Fujiwara Tamiko is ninth-century emperor Seiwa’s beloved consort. After the emperor’s death, she uses his love letters and poems in a unique way.
Performers (in order of appearance)
Karen Kandel (dancer/actress) as papermaker
Sonoko Soeda (actress) as Oshin
Shisui Arai, biwa player
Shonosuke Okura, Noh otsuzumi drummer
Makiko Sakurai (specialist in ancient chant and dance) as Fujiwara Tamiko
Nicole Pearce, lighting designer