The Program in Dramatic Literature is thrilled to partner with NYU Gallatin for a reading of SUICIDE FOREST, a new work by theatre artist and creator of works “full of impulses and ideas, and splendid, fractious energy”(New York Times) Kristine Haruna Lee, and directed by the acclaimed “riotously alive…great theater” (New York Times) maker Aya Ogawa.
Suicide Forest is a bilingual nightmare play excavating the Japanese-American consciousness and its looming relationship with sex, suicide, and identity. In 1990’s Japan, a teenage girl grapples with her sexuality in a nightmarish, male-defined society as a salaryman desperately tries to escape his masochistic psyche. Both are clawing for their self-worth. When their two journeys collide, they expose their darkest desires fueled by shame as they now confront life and death with the notorious Suicide Forest looming over their imagination. Performed by a Japanese heritage cast, Suicide Forest breaks through the silence and submissiveness often associated with Japanese and Japanese American identity, examining the role of community and the inner struggles of emotional, psychic and social suicide through the playwright’s lived stories and inner landscape.
The play features Japanese text in live translation.
Suicide Forest is co-sponsored with the NYU English Department's Program in Dramatic Literature and NYU Gallatin and is free and open to the public.
RSVP here.
