Within the halls of the Japan Society’s landmarked building in New York comes a new experience inspired by Wilder’s Pulitzer prize-winning play Our Town.
Of the infinite stars in the galaxy, a young boy fixates on one that is located ten-thousand light years away and has long perished by the time of the boy’s discovery. Imagine that at that same moment, the boy is actually an old man being watched by someone on a faraway star! Such are the mind-bending ideas whirling through Our Planet, a tale by the young Japanese playwright Yukio Shiba that juxtaposes the minutia of an average Japanese family’s life with the galactic events of the Earth’s birth and death. Inspired by Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, Shiba’s Our Planet won the most prestigious Kishida Kunio Drama Award in 2010. Performed in English.
The Japan Society’s Program Officer, Lara Mones, has stated that the creative team has “[…] decided to take the play out of the confines of our theater and have the audience actually travel with the actors around the various rooms of our landmarked building. We are really thrilled about the world premiere of this production.”
For performance times and other details, please visit the Japan Society’s website.
