Halcyon Days – The Play
Halcyon Days
Halcyon Days, by renowned Japanese playwright and director Shoji Kokami, receives its English language premiere with this production at Riverside Studios. Also directed by Shoji Kokami, the text is translated by Brooklyn based, Tokyo born writer, director and performer Aya Ogawa.
Examining the cult popularity of suicide websites in contemporary Japanese culture, the play looks at a decade where world conflicts are sensationally streamed on twenty-four hour rolling news channels using terms like ‘collateral damage’ and ‘human shields’. Even terrorist organisations boast about their achievements on YouTube, and chronic depression is catered for by the increase of ‘informative’ suicide websites. Are people becoming more jaded with their real existence? Has life lost sanctity and meaning?
Halcyon Days is a dark comedy that follows the story of three people and one ghost who meet on a suicide website. Will they become another statistic in an increasingly worrying trend or, beneath the will to die, can they find in each other a reason to survive.
Well, apart from the ghost … he’s already dead.
The Project to Date
In January 2009, the English language version of Halcyon Days was the subject of a one week workshop concluding with a public reading of the play, generously supported by the Japan Foundation and the Japan UK 150 Celebration.
W-Squared Productions went on to commission a new translation from the acclaimed writer Aya Ogawa specifically for a limited run at the Riverside Studios, Hammersmith.
‘Halcyon Days’ follows Kokami’s previous outing as a writer and director in London with his play ‘Trance’, a hugely successful production which he showcased in English at the Bush Theatre in 2007.
This collaboration aims to give further exposure to one of Japan’s most prominent theatrical figures to a British audience.
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