Opium

About

OPIUM was a joint production between P3 and Kenji Suzuki’s THEATRE GROUP TAO in Tokyo. Stephen Weeks wrote in THEATRE FORUM: “The process reflected the commitment of all concerned to the careful development of an experimental work whose inflections were both postmodern and intercultural. …In addition, the text was designed to be spoken partly in Japanese and partly in English…OPIUM was conceived from the beginning as a project grounded equally in two worlds, Japan and America, Tokyo and Seattle…..two languages, two traditions, two audiences, two geographies.” OPIUM features Lady Macbeth, Thomas DeQuincey, Jean Cocteau, and the revolutionary Kanno Sugako, as Thomas secretly tries to stage MACBETH in the asylum. As Weeks put it: “The collage elements of the script made for a non-linear narrative that ebbed and flowed like an opium dream.” And its “movement text” was physically demanding and reflective of Kenji Suzuki’s evolving movement vocabulary, one which evolved–after he left Tadashi Suzuki’s company–into increasing explorations of three-dimensionality and the loss of stability. OPIUM exists “somewhere between night and day, between dreaming and waking, between the rigor of institutional routines and the fragility of inner lives.”