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THE VERY LAST PERFORMANCE STARTS AT 8:15 TONIGHT!

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MAP “59E59″ Theatre

Phew! One more show to go. Come see me to NYC!

What? Me?  I’m your relaxing bear “Relakkuma”.

Find me on the stage. I mean, you know, well just wanna say

Thank you for visiting our blog, and thanks to those who came to see the play.

Thank you.

I love you all

Satomi Sato works mornings making boxed lunches. She said her family’s difficulties began in the late 1990s, when the economic slide worsened on the island of Hokkaido, as it did across much of rural Japan.

JAPAN TRIES TO FACE UP TO POVERTY PROBLEM

By MARTIN FACKLER

Published: April 21, 2010

When I directed the production of Enjoy at New National Theatre Tokyo in 2006, my intent was to provoke the audience. In other words, I wanted to stage a productive collision by presenting this play about issues relevant to my generation — through a very unconventional performance style — to the relatively older crowd who frequent the prestigious New National Theatre Tokyo. I think I was successful in doing so. But that was three and half year ago.

When I saw The Play Company’s production in New York, I was struck by the intimacy that the show created with the audience. It was the absolute opposite of what I had attempted to create with my production. Was I disappointed by the result? Not at all.

In fact I would venture to say that Dan’s direction of this piece, which takes great care in communicating with the audience, is perhaps much more successful a production that the version I directed myself.  Of course, it’s impossible to draw a fair comparison between the two productions, given that theme of this play –  the state of young working people – is becoming a more serious issue in the U.S. now, and the various contexts in the play resonate very differently in New York and Tokyo.

In any case, I’m very happy that a play I wrote has received another production like this. It makes me even happier, not only that it has been revived, but that its has been revived as a production that cultivates such wonderful relationship with its audience.  And that the show has even been extended! That means perhaps there will have been more people who see the New York production than the Tokyo production.  Well, I must admit, that makes me a bit jealous.

I’d like to express my heartfelt appreciation to everyone who was involved in this production. Among them, I’d like to especially thank Ms. Aya Ogawa, who captured my taste for tedious meandering Japanese perfectly, and delivered the play to the audience in English without ever betraying the sense of strangeness of a “translated play.”

Toshiki Okada

Translated by Aya Ogawa

© Frank Harts

ENJOY IS A MUST-SEE EVENT!

CRITIC’S PICK! – THE NEW YORK TIMES

★★★★ – Time Out NY

THE PLAY COMPANY presents

BY TOSHIKI OKADA
TRANSLATED BY AYA OGAWA
DIRECTED BY DAN ROTHENBERG

THE NEW YORKER:
“It’s a treat!  Toshiki Okada’s play, about part-time workers at a Tokyo manga café, is a delightful study in frustration.”

BACKSTAGE:”Hipster Beckett.”

thatsoundscool: “They are more than enough. They are: Enjoy.”

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It’s Gen X vs. Gen Y in this offbeat comedy of 21st century comedy of manners, that follows the romantic adventures of employees in a Tokyo manga café.  A panorama, by one of Japan’s cutting-edge storytellers, of young workers adrift amidst economic turbulence and social change.

WITH Jessica Almasy, Steven Boyer, Frank Harts, Kris Kling,
Joshua Koehn, Mary McCool, Joseph Midyett, Kira Sternbach, Alex Torra, Stacey Yen

THROUGH MAY 1 ONLY

TUES & WED at 7:15    THURS – SAT at 8:15
SAT at 2:15 & SUN at 3:15

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© Kira Sternbach

KIRA-san plays ACTRESS 1 in ENJOY.

Theatre Credits Include:
In A Dark Dark House (Almeida Theatre, London) How I learned to Drive (Terry Schreiber) American Girls (45th St. Theatre) The Shape Of Things (Edinburgh Fringe) Gerald’s Method (Center Stage) Beef (Crowne Point Festival) Raised By Lesbians (Barrow St. Theatre) Surgery (MITF, NY) The Interstate And On (Southstreet Seaport ) Spoken Insects (Dixon Place) Understanding (The Theatre Project, NJ) One Night (East Coast Tour) Pains Of Youth (Cal Rep Theatre)

Film/Television Include:
The Prisoner, My Normal, Three Windows, Anyone But Me, Lately, Virgin

“Tokyo, not quite so cool when you are unemployed”

©Geoff Read

“Younger people are appearing in the parks at feeding stations in greater numbers too, their ‘bed’ of choice often being a chair in an all night internet cafe. -  I was angry all over again at the gulf between the often negative perception of homeless people in Japan and the reality.”

Visit Geoff’s blog HERE