Intercultural Listening

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Notes

1 Mari Boyd is a preeminent scholar of Ōta’s work, and translator of many of his plays.

2 Shōgo Ōta, Elements, written and first produced in 1994. The video used as a score for our production is also from a 1994 performance at Spiral Hall (Tokyo), starring Segawa Tetsuya, Shinagawa Tōru, Ōsugi Sazanami, Suzuki Rieko, Tanigawa Kiyomi, Kino Hana and Andō Tomoko. Video released in 2004: Ōta Shōgo no sekai (The World of Shōgo Ōta) DVD Box Set, Disc 3.

3 The scene to which this text refers may be seen at: https://vimeo.com/ user4245838/review/ 455075350/0cc647d095

4 This was a wide-ranging daoist movement practice taught by Lynette Hunter in Davis, California.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Peter Lichtenfels

Peter Lichtenfels is a German-Canadian theatre director and dramaturge who has committed his artistic career to intercultural theatre and performance. As artistic director at the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh he developed the drama of the new Scots renaissance in the 1980s. As executive and artistic director of the Leicester Haymarket in the 1980s-90s, he supported the growth of international theatre and the theatre of migrancy in the UK. From the 1990s to today he has worked professionally directing transcultural productions, and as Professor of Dramatic Arts at the University of California, Davis. Lichtenfels' recent publications include the editing of Sentient Performativities (2016) and Shakespeare and Realism (2018). His recent productions focus on the work of the Japanese playwright Shogo Ota: Plastic Rose (2014, Edinburgh Fringe Assembly Rooms), and Elements (2017, USA; 2019, Colombia).

Kevin O’Connor

Kevin O'Connor, of Gaelic (Scottish and Irish) and Sicilian descent, is a multidisciplinary artist working as a choreographer, dance improviser and circus artist. He is involved in a decadelong artistic collective exploring participatory de-colonizing performances within polluted watersheds in Ontario. Over the last few years, he has worked with NAKA dance in Oakland, Shakiri and Skywatchers in the Bay Area, Oncogrrrls feminist art collective in Spain. He has collaborated with Inuit hunter and designer Paulette Metuq on a project in Nunavut in the Canadian Arctic and is currently working on a new work called TRY with Circo Zero. He drew on all of these practices for his work in the play Elements.