MADAMA BUTTERFLY

Satoko Ichihara, one of the most important theater makers of Japan’s new generation, is known for her bold and minutely observed portrayals of disquiet related to human life and sexuality. In 2022, she takes on Puccini’s opera “Madama Butterfly” where a young geisha is married to an american officer. He impregnates her — and disappears shortly afterwards. She later learns that he has remarried and commits suicide. Ichihara turns the tables in her adaptation, and tells the story from the point of view of the single mother, played by Kyōko Takenaka. Ichihara collaborates with Juan Ferrari to create an video scenography populated by avatars-archetypes that exist in the protagonist’s psyche and turn this story on its head to instead depict a Western male from the perspective of a Japanese female, challenging our preconceptions, both conscious and unconscious, about race and gender.