Download Yasukichi Murakami: Through A Distant Lens

Riverside Theatres presents
A Performance 4A Production
YASUKICHI MURAKAMI:
THROUGH A DISTANT LENS
16 – 19 March
WRITER’S NOTE
In time I have learnt that the most respectful thing a photographer can do is to listen.
Listening is more than just hearing. It is an act of taking notice, making an effort to
hold space in reverence, trusting, and responding in humility. Yasukichi Murakami Through a Distant Lens was created by listening to my creative collaborators and
following their voices to guide the shaping of this work, to my own voice in
conversation with the spirit of Yasukichi Murakami, his descendants and those who
remember his name. Unlike my previous documentary performance works,
Yasukichi Murakami meant interviewing a ghost to find his truth. I had to listen more
carefully than I had ever done before, and this is where I found fact and imagination,
past and present, meeting my truth in theatre.
– Mayu Kanamori, 2016
CAST
Arisa Yura
Kuni Hashimoto
Yumi Umiumare (Video)
Terumi Narushima (Musician)
CREATIVES
Writer/Original Concept
Mayu Kanamori
Director
Malcolm Blaylock
Dramaturge
Jane Bodie
Lighting Designer
Benjamin Brockman
Visual Designer
Mic Gruchy
Composer/Sound Designer
Terumi Narushima
Dramaturgical Consultant
Yuji Sone
Producer
Annette Shun Wah
BIOGRAPHIES
Mayu Kanamori
Writer and Original Concept
Mayu Kanamori is a Sydney based photographer, storyteller and animateur,
exploring cross cultural, migrational and Japanese diasporic themes. Her works
have received the National Aborigines and Islanders Day Observance Committee’s
Non Indigenous Reconciliation Award, a commendation by United Nations Media
Peace Awards and selected as a finalist for the Walkley Awards, Conrad Jupiter Art
Prize, Olive Cotton Award for Photographic Portraiture, Julie Milowick Photography
Prize and Harries National Digital Art Awards.
Her theatre works include The Heart of the Journey (Post Mainstream Performance
Festival, Tokyo, Christchurch Arts Festival, Darwin Festival), CHIKA: A
Documentary Performance (Malthouse; Performance Space; OzAsia Festival;
Salihara Festival, Jakarta) and In Repose (OzAsia Festival; on site at Broome,
Thursday Island, Townsville Japanese Cemeteries).
Malcolm Blaylock
Director
Malcolm has over seventeen years’ experience in the theatre both as a freelance
director and as Artistic Director of La Boite, Junction and Circle Theatre Companies.
He collaborated with Mayu Kanamori on her two previous major works: The Heart of
the Journey and CHIKA: A Documentary Performance.
He was artistic director of the Darwin Festival and has also been the director of the
St Kilda Festival, the St Kilda Film Festival, the Australian International Workshop
Festival, the Adelaide Fringe Festival, and the Heart of Gold International Film
Festival.
Malcolm is currently Program Director of the Human Rights Arts and Film Festival.
Jane Bodie
Dramaturg
Jane’s plays have been performed worldwide including Music, Hinterland, This
Years Ashes, A Single Act, Still, Ride and Fourplay. She won the Victorian Premier’s
Literary Award in 2006 and a Green Room Award in 2003.
As a dramaturg she has worked on productions including Dona Abela’s Jump For
Jordan, Kathryn Marquet’s Pale Blue Dot, Julia Rose Lewis’ Samson, and with
Ilbijerri Theatre Company on ongoing projects.
Jane has written for television and radio, including The Secret Life of Us, Tashi and
Moving Wallpaper and is currently adapting This Years Ashes for Screen Australia.
She has worked with The Royal Court Theatre, was Head of Playwriting at National
Institute of Dramatic Art (2010 – 2012), Associate Artist at Griffin Theatre Company
(2013) and Artistic Associate at Playwriting Australia (2014).
Terumi Narushima
Composer, Sound Designer and Musician
Terumi is a composer, performer and sound designer who specialises in alternative
tuning systems. Her works include Tritriadic Chimes, a sound installation for Los
Angeles MicroFest, Hidden Sidetracks, a composition for custom-made instruments
premiered by Ensemble Offspring at the Sydney Opera House; and a project to build
microtonal flutes using 3D printing. She has worked on various film and theatre
collaborations, and performs regularly with the microtonal ensemble Clocks and
Clouds. Terumi is also a senior lecturer in music at the University of Wollongong.
Mic Gruchy
Visual Designer
Mic is a video artist, designer, film editor and producer. His work spans theatre,
opera, dance, installation, feature film and television. He was awarded an Australia
Council Outstanding Artist’s Fellowship in interdisciplinary practice in 2012.
His theatrical design credits include productions for Opera Australia, Sydney
Theatre Company, Legs on the Wall and numerous international arts festivals.
Recent productions include Letter to Larry in London’s West End and Ghosts in the
Scheme, a new work for acclaimed company BIGhART. Mic’s upcoming productions
include a new Indonesian-Australian co-production Age of Bones and a new opera
The Crushing for Opera Queensland.
Benjamin Brockman
Lighting Designer
Benjamin’s 2015 lighting design credits include NSW Senior Citizens Regional
Concert, Grey Gardens The Musical (Squabbalogic Independent Music Theatre),
The Aliens (Outhouse Theatre), Dark Vanilla Jungle (Mad March Hare Theatre
Company), Griffin Theatre Company Launch, Space Cats (Brevity Theatre), Detroit
(Darlinghurst Theatre Company), Animal/People (Rock Surfers Theatre Company),
Shivered (Mad March Hare Theatre Company), When the Rain Stops Falling (New
Theatre), Man of La Mancha (Squabbalogic Independent Music Theatre), Vampire
Lesbians of Sodom (Brevity Theatre), Smurfs Live on Stage World Tour (Millennium
Entertainment International).
His production design credits for last year include Dark Vanilla Jungle (Mad March
Hare Theatre Company), Blue Italian and Nil By Sea (Peter Fray Presents),
Shivered (Mad March Hare Theatre Company) and Vampire Lesbians of Sodom
(Brevity Theatre).
Arisa Yura
Performer
Arisa Yura has worked extensively as an actress, movement and voice artist, and
performance maker in Australia, Japan and Canada. Her theatre credits include
Nippon Memories (National Institute of Dramatic Art’s Director’s Project), Rival of
Men with Marshmallow Wave (Honda Theatre, Tokyo, Japan), Teen Dream (Fu-Gen
Theatre Company, Toronto, Canada), the World Premiere of Justin Fleming’s play
His Mother’s Voice with bAKEHOUSE Theatre Company (Australian Theatre of
Young People Select), and most recently in we, the lost company with Clockfire
Theatre Company (The Old 505 Theatre). Her television credits include Lifestyle
Café and her debut lead role in Ballad of Praying Mantis, which was a winner of an
Eat Carpet Award (SBS).
Kuni Hashimoto
Performer
Kuni is an accomplished stage, film and television actor in Australia and Japan. He
was a member of the Shiki Theater Company in Japan. Kuni has also worked as an
onstage narrator for the Japan Philharmonic Orchestra, the Sapporo Symphony
Orchestra, the PMF and a joint concert by the Vienna and Berlin Philharmonic
Orchestras. After moving to Australia, he has worked mainly in film and television.
His extensive credits include Muriel’s Wedding, Tender Hook, Broken Sun, Sisters
of War, Unbroken and Predestination.
Yumi Umiumare
Performer (Video)
Born in Hyogo, Japan, Yumi is an established Butoh dancer and choreographer in
Australia and the creator of Butoh Cabaret works. Yumi has been creating and
teaching her distinctive style of works over the last 20 years. Her works are
renowned for provoking visceral emotions and cultural identities and have been
seen in numerous festivals in dance, theatre and film productions throughout
Australia, Japan, Europe, New Zealand, South East Asia and South America,
receiving critical acclaim and garnering her and her collaborators several Green
Room Awards. Yumi is a recent recipient of an Australia Council fellowship,
exploring her PopUp Tearoom series.
Annette Shun Wah
Producer
Annette Shun Wah is a published writer, actor, broadcaster and producer. As
executive producer of Performance 4a she has produced highly acclaimed
intercultural productions, including In Between Two and The Serpent’s Table (coproduced with Griffin Theatre Company) which both premiered at Sydney Festivals.
With William Yang she co-directed the theatrical storytelling shows Stories Then &
Now and Stories East & West and was co-dramaturg with him on In Between Two.
YASUKICHI MURAKAMI PHOTOGRAPHIC EXHIBITION
Whilst researching for the theatre production Yasukichi Murakami – Through a
Distant Lens, his original photographic prints and printed postcards were found.
Some were on mantelpieces in homes of old Broome families; with a researcher in
Bunbury; in the Northern Territory Library’s photographic collection - unaccredited to
him as a photographer; and in his hometown in Japan from where Murakami
originally set sail for Australia. Yasukichi Murakami – Through a Distant Lens’
production team is donating Murakami’s photographs to the State Library of Western
Australia, and are honored to be able to contribute to the finding and archiving of a
slice of Australian history that had been lost.
This photographic exhibition at Riverside Theatres is the first time Yasukichi
Murakami’s work has been exhibited. Please join us in the Foyer after the show to
experience this powerful exhibition.
THANK YOU
ADDITIONAL MUSIC
In a Pentagonal Room performed by Clocks and Clouds (Kraig Grady and Terumi
Narushima)
Bakya Mo Neneng and Shakehand Dance performed by The Darwin Rondalla
PHOTO CREDITS
Photographs and images courtesy of Murakami Family Archives, Noreen Jones
Photographic Collection, Sisters of St John of God Photographic Collection, Broome
Historical Society, National Archives of Australia, Australian War Memorial, National
Museum of Australia, Kate Lance Photographic Collection Mutsumi Tsuda
Photographic Collection and Archives, Hamaguchi Family Archives, Puertollano /
Masuda Family Archives, Ted and Eunice Hang Family Archives, The Darwin
Rondalla, Watabe Australia, Northern Territory Library’s Young Mayse, V. Fletcher,
D. D Smith, Bill Allcorn, Al Jarvis, Bill Littlejohn, Bill and Betty Eacott, Marella, G. J.
Towers, Frank Blackwell, Peter Spillett, and Fay Kilgariff Collections.
THEATRE 4A COMMITTEE
Dai Le
Ien Ang
Jenevieve Chang
Alison Cook
Teik-Kim Pok
Gary Williams
William Yang
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia
Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body; Creative Ecologies Lab,
Media, Music, Communications and Cultural Studies, Macquarie University; the
Japan Foundation; School of the Arts and Media, University of NSW; and
Playwriting Australia. Performance 4a is supported by the NSW Government
through Arts NSW.
RIVERSIDE THEATRES
Director
Robert Love
Business Manager
Pamela Thornton
Marketing & Communications Manager
Jonathan Llewellyn
Operations Manager
Linda Taylor
Program Manager
Michelle Kotevski
Executive Producer,
National Theatre of Parramatta
Joanne Kee
OUR PARTNERS
Parramatta City Council
Principal Partner (Government)
Arts NSW
Partner (Government)
Crown Resorts and Packer Family Foundation
Major Partner
Novotel Sydney Parramatta
Partner (Hotel)