A rehearsed reading of Kishida Rio’s Love – Part one (Koi Sonoichi/恋 其之壱)

Feb 09, 2018
  • 7:00 PM
  • Location:
    Dorothy Somerset Studio
    6361 University Blvd.
    Vancouver, BC

Love – Part 1 (Koi-Sonoichi/恋　其之壱) is the first part of a trilogy about passion, desire and obsession, but it is not your typical romance. Written in Kishida’s signature angura style of power and madness, we meet a girl-beggar tied to a black dog, a woman split into five parts seeking revenge on her absent husband, and a philosopher-prostitute who falls in love with a talking dead man. Love – Part 1 is apparently set in a downtown tenement of pre-war Tokyo, but ultimately it takes place in the hearts of women repressed by society, who are “trying to rip the blindfold off an unwitting Cupid.”

This reading, translated from Japanese by Tsuneda Keiko and Colleen Lanki, is the result of a collaboration between the Departments of Theatre and Film and Asian Studies at UBC and is part of Enacting Culture/s: Theatre and film across disciplines. This series of talks, performances and screenings is generously funded by the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies. Additional support provided by these Departments and others named above.

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