Thousand Years Waiting and Other Plays

Name: Thousand Years Waiting and Other Plays
Brand: Unknown
SKU: 9780857420206
Price: 47.99 NZD
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By Chiori Miyagawa

Series: In Performance

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Summary

Thousand Years Waiting and Other Plays by Chiori Miyagawa is a collection of seven plays that delve into themes of memory and identity. Blending poetic language with harsh realities, these plays feature fluid shifts in time and space, with characters navigating multiple dimensions simultaneously. The protagonists are often outsiders—emotionally, physically, or socially—with the boundary between life and death portrayed as thin. Notable plays include the title piece where a woman in New York enters the world of a millennium-old Japanese memoir; Leaving Eden, merging historical Chekhovian Russia with modern New York; Awakening, inspired by Kate Chopin's novella, which follows a woman's journey toward death; and Red Again, reflecting on human violence through the perspective of Sophocles's Antigone in Buddhist bardo.
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Format: Paperback / softback

$47⁹⁹

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Thousand Years Waiting and Other Plays

$47⁹⁹

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This collection will appeal to readers interested in experimental theatre, poetic drama, and explorations of cultural and historical disjunctions. Those keen on innovative narratives that challenge conventional storytelling and engage with themes of identity and memory will find this work compelling.

Includes seven plays that explore themes of memory and identity.

Description

The seven plays that comprise Chiori Miyagawa’s Thousand Years Waiting and Other Plays explore themes of memory and identity. Her plays combine poetic language with harsh reality, and time and space are fluid in the worlds she creates—they converge and separate while the characters inhabit many dimensions at once with ease.

In one way or another, the heroes and heroines of these plays are outsiders—emotionally (as in Awakening), physically (as in Comet Hunter) or socially (as in Broken Morning), and the line that separates life and death is thin.

In the title play, a woman in New York City begins to live in the world of a thousand-year-old Japanese memoir that she is reading. The characters in Leaving Eden enter, exit, and re-enter Anton Chekhov’s Russia from 1887 to 1904, only to end up at a wedding reception in 2005 in New York where Chekhov appears and takes a seat at a table.

Inspired by the 1899 Kate Chopin novella of the same name, Awakening follows Edna in her journey toward death, through fragmented childhood memories and visions of freedom. Red Again begins after Sophocles’s Antigone dies. She lands in Buddhist bardo, contemplating the history of human violence.

“Chiori Miyagawa adamantly refuses to provide those signposts that more comforting dramatists leave to reassure audiences. The force of her work lies in its jarring historical and cultural discontinuities, its mixture of brutality and beauty, its disorienting verbal and visual impact.”—Martin Harries, New York University