c/o Elaine Devlin Literary, Inc.
20 W. 23rd Street, 3rd floor
New York, NY 10010
(212) 206-8160
(212) 206-8168 fax
Agent
Email:
edevlinlit@aol.com
Email:
chiori@verizon.net
Chiori Miyagawa's plays vary in style, yet they all reflect her interest in memory and identity in different ways. Memories in her plays may be real, distorted, fabricated, collective, or personally life-changing. Her plays have been seen off-Broadway, at renowned performance spaces in NYC, and regionally, and published in six different play anthologies. Her work has been supported by many grants and fellowships including McKnight Playwriting Fellowship, New York Foundation for the Arts Playwriting Fellowship, Van Lier Playwriting Fellowship, Multi-Arts Production Fund (twice), Asian Cultural Council Fellowship, and Rockefeller Bellagio Residency. She is an active member of the Dramatists Guild, a Usual Suspect of New York Theatre Workshop, Playwright-in-Residence at Bard College, and serves on the board of ART/N.Y.
LEAF
Drama, Two Acts
1M, 2W
Flexible Set
Leaf takes place in present day Tucson, AZ. Leaf, a forensic
anthropologist, comes back to her hometown to find out that her high
school friend Sharon has died. She suspects that Sharon, who was
mentally ill, was murdered by her own family. She contacts a local
reporter, David Forster, and together, they set off to discover the true
cause of Sharon's death. During this process, a vague portrait of Sharon
is constructed based on the memories of others who once knew her. Leaf
is a play about memory and identity. Leaf knows her own fate; soon she
will lose her memory because of a rare condition of early-onset
Alzheimer's disease. The play explores how we all depend on the fragile
nature of human memory to give us immortality.
Readings: Voice & Vision (2006); New Dramatists (2007).
LEAVING EDEN, A Tragicomedy Inspired by Chekhov's Life and Stories
Drama, Two Acts
3M (1 Asian-American), 4W
Flexible Set
Leaving Eden is a new play inspired by Chekhov's life and stories.
Fifteen characters appear and disappear and reappear in Russia over a
span of twenty-five years (1880-1905); and then somehow they all end up
at a wedding reception in New York City in the present. The characters
are at once comic and tragic and their journeys complex in the tradition
of Chekhov.
Commissioned by The Meadows School of the Arts, Southern Methodist University Graduate Acting Program (2004); Production at SMU (2005). Reading, Mondays@3 at New York Theatre Workshop (2006). Workshop at Teatro Vista (2007).
"In Leaving Eden, we are recognizably in the same world as in the great Chekhov plays. The epilogue, harsh in its comic ironies, brings Chekhov himself on stage, as well as descendants of some of the characters from earlier scenes. Ms. Miyagawa allows us to retain some belief in the idea of progress, but is skeptical that we will ever get back to any sort of Eden."--Dallas Morning News
THOUSAND YEARS WAITING
Drama, One Act, with Optional Music by Bruce Odland
3W (multi-racial)
Flexible Set
Thousand Years Waiting is a storytelling piece with original
music and movement, threading three generations of women's memories
through time and space. A woman today, in New York City, is reading a
memoir written one thousand years ago by a woman in Japan; the woman
writing her memoir in old Japan is reading The Tale of Genji. The
history of storytelling is woven like a spider's web, and the woman in
present step in and out of real and fictional worlds in the past.
Crossing Jamaica Avenue in co-production with P.S. 122 (2006); Envision Retreat at Vassar College.
"Chiori Miyagawa crosses culture and genres to illustrate the seductive power of our selective memories--and how the old patterns can be transcended."--TimeOut New York
"Chiori Miyagawa, whose contribution to last season's The Antigone Project was one of that evening's highlights, blends together two millennium-old Japanese writings with her own modern sensibility."--New York Sun
RED AGAIN
10-minute Play
1M, 2W
Written as Part of a Full-Evening Play by 5 Playwrights: Antigone Project
Flexible Set
Thousand Years Waiting is a storytelling piece with original
music and movement, threading three generations of women's memories
through time and space. A woman today, in New York City, is reading a
memoir written one thousand years ago by a woman in Japan; the woman
writing her memoir in old Japan is reading The Tale of Genji. The
history of storytelling is woven like a spider's web, and the woman in
present step in and out of real and fictional worlds in the past.
Crossing Jamaica Avenue in co-production with P.S. 122 (2006); Envision Retreat at Vassar College.
"Chiori Miyagawa crosses culture and genres to illustrate the seductive power of our selective memories--and how the old patterns can be transcended."--TimeOut New York
"Chiori Miyagawa, whose contribution to last season's The Antigone Project was one of that evening's highlights, blends together two millennium-old Japanese writings with her own modern sensibility."--New York Sun
AMERICA DREAMING
One-act Drama
4M (1 Asian, 3 Caucasian), 3W (2 Asian, 1 Caucasian)
Optional Original Music by Tan Dun
Flexible Set
Yuki, a young Asian American woman, suddenly finds herself time traveling through a fictitious version of American history. She travels to the time of the Great Depression, WWII, the Vietnam War, the Korean War, and the future. Each period contains false memories, historical inaccuracies, and fragments of truth. She is returned to the present when she finds something like her identity.
Commissioned by Music-Theatre Group. Co-Production at Vineyard Theatre with MTG (1995).
"As shown in America Dreaming, the impressionistic music-theater piece exploring the collision of Eastern and Western cultures, that notion of happily-ever-after assimilation was always a myth."--New York Times
"Beautifully hallucinatory in presentation... America Dreaming...is an offbeat piece of theater-going that's as pleasurable to watch as it is challenging...."--Star-Ledger
NOTHING FOREVER
One-act Drama with Songs
1M (must be singer/piano player), 2W (1 Asian-American)
Flexible Set
One woman's expressionistic voyage through the cluttered terrain of unresolved memories, alienation and uncertain hope. Lyrics by Mark Campbell, music by Fabian Obispo
New York Theatre Workshop (1996); New Georges (1999).
YESTERDAY'S WINDOW
Drama, 10 Minutes
1M, 2W (1 Asian American)
Flexible Set
The play stands on its own, however, it is also a companion piece to Nothing Forever and can be performed by the same actors. Yesterday's Window is a play about a woman and her imaginary daughter, and the outside world that intrudes on their loving relationship, full of wonder, joy, and, ultimately, sadness.
Commissioned by New York Theatre Workshop. New York Theatre Workshop (1996); New Hampshire Theatre Project (2006).
WOMAN KILLER
One-act Drama
5M, 3W
Flexible Set
Adopted from the 1721 Japanese Bunraku puppet play by Chikamatsu, Woman Killer is the story of two ordinary upper-class American families and a terrible tragedy that destroys their lives. A young man strays so far from the life that he was meant to live that in a moment of despair, he kills a neighbor for money. This desperate act erupts at the end of a long personal descent riddled with debt, rage, and jealousy. The play explores the nature of human violence from both perspectives of the trauma, the aggressor's and the victim's, and transcends time, place, and culture to portray a sobering story of a murder, too familiar in the society in which we live today.
Crossing Jamaica Avenue in co-production with HERE Arts Center (2001). Readings: New York Theatre Workshop (2000); Japan Society (2000).
"The play is supremely original, combining traditional narrative with monologues, music, and movement to present its themes from different perspectives... Woman Killer is riveting, compelling theatre, and it raises questions that don't--won't--go away."--nytheatre.com
ANTIGONE'S RED
Drama, 10 Minutes
2M (1 Asian-American, 1 Caucasian), 2W (both Asian-American)
Flexible Set
Set in a relocation camp for Japanese citizens during World War II, the play examines Sophocles's question of the state authority versus individual rights, through the abuse practiced on the incarcerated Japanese Americans and different choices that the characters make to survive the hardship and racial discrimination.
Produced: Virginia Tech (2004).
"She (Miyagawa's Antigone) makes a parallel between herself and an imaginary young woman who was killed in the (Hiroshima) bombing.... Creon has become a symbol of leadership in its most unyielding inhumane form."--roanoke.com
JAMAICA AVENUE
Drama, Two Acts
1M (Latino or African-American), 2W (1 Asian-American and 1 Caucasian)
Flexible Set
Jamaica Avenue is a play that combines realism with magic. It is about three intertwining and transforming lives: a man, a spirit who comes back as a woman, and a woman who becomes ghost. Their stories about drug addiction, stealing, hurting, longing, finding, and surviving span fourteen years of love, disappointment, and hope.
New York International Fringe Festival (1998).
"A beautiful piece...lyrical work very nicely underscore Miyagawa's themes of survival and the passage of time."--In Theater
COMET HUNTER
Drama, Two Acts
1M, 4W
Flexible Set
Comet Hunter is based on the life of the first recognized woman astronomer in history, Caroline Herschel. Born in 1750 in Hanover, Germany, Caroline followed her brother William, the celebrated astronomer, to England when she was twenty-two. She was a strange looking woman, her growth stunted at age twelve from typhus. She devoted her life to assisting her brother and never married. The play is a story of about a brother and a sister who share the celestial enchantment. Caroline is guided by a prophet, a woman, who is "Time," who makes hope for the future and healing of memories possible.
Alfred P. Sloan/EST Commission (2001). First Light Festival at EST (2002). Workshop at Madison Repertory Theatre (2003).
BROKEN MORNING: STORIES FROM THE DEATH ROW FACTORY
Drama with Songs, One Act
5 multi-racial actors to play multiple roles
Flexible Set
Broken Morning is a fictional play based on interviews with men on death row at the Huntsville prison; a woman on death row in the Gatesville prison, TX. The play takes place in the sewing factory at the Ellis One Unit of the prison where men awaiting execution go to work every weekday. Interwoven with their stories of violence, poverty and demons are the stories of people who surround the business of death row and the sorrow and hopes of the victims' families. The play contains songs: lyrics by Mark Campbell and music by Daniel Sonnenberg. A version without songs is also available.
Dallas Theatre Center, Big D of the Unexpected Festival (1999); Crossing Jamaica Avenue in co-production with HERE Arts Center (2003).
"Broken Morning is a powerful and important work of theatre...is compelling storytelling of the first order.. This is theatre at its best, doing what theatre does best."--nytheatre.com
"An impressive compilation of vignettes and personal stories...Broken Morning offers a fascinating, multi-faced view of crime and punishment in the United Stages."--electroniclink.com
"It's about incremental discoveries, picking up subtle clues about the humanity of the people we as a society have consigned to death and the people in whose name we've done it."--offoffoff.com
AWAKENING
Drama, One Act
4W, 3M
Flexible Set
Inspired by Kate Chopin's novel, The Awakening. The play is about a desire for an eternal existence. Chopin appears as a character and watches her novel on stage as she writes it, lives in 1899 as well as ceaselessly, and is almost interchangeable with her own heroine, Edna. She exists to live and die her own life, which had already happened in real time, but also to live Edna's, as time rewinds and fast-forwards in fictional time. Throughout the play, the novel is both in the process of being written and already completed.
Crossing Jamaica Avenue in co-production with P.S. 122 and Dance Theater Workshop (2000).
"Miyagawa has mixed the story of Kate Chopin's life with the events of the novel, so that the author floats in and out of the action on stage. Awakening also explores the power of silence, using movement to tell much of the story."--Columbia Spectator