Plays Written by Aya Ogawa:
THE NOSEBLEED
MEAT SUIT
OPH3LIA
LUDIC PROXY
Synopses:
The Nosebleed (6 actors) – The Nosebleed is an intimate autobiography that explores playwright/director Aya Ogawa’s fractured relationship with their long-deceased and enigmatic father. Through a series of turbulent, absurd, and poignantly comic vignettes, four actors play “Aya” while the playwright themself plays their 5-year-old son and father, as the play explores the seemingly insurmountable cultural and generational gap between Aya and their father, and the questions they face in their own parenthood today. A theatrical memorial and healing ritual for the audience, this darkly humorous, tender, and inventive play considers how we inherit and bequeath failure, and what it takes to forgive. The Nosebleed emerged from an exploratory process around the topic of failure (from personal, artistic, career, systemic), and how we as a culture typically do not create space for acknowledging, processing and honoring failure.
Meat Suit (5 actors) – Weight gain. Amnesia. Insomnia. Loss of sex drive. Body dysmorphia. Exhaustion. Isolation. And the greatest love of your life. Everyone talks about how wonderful and life-changing motherhood can be — but why is something viewed as so positive also so horribly painful, frustrating, debilitating and seemingly impossible? A new ensemble play about the shit show that is motherhood.
OPH3LIA (13 actors) – Through three disparate, interweaving stories of disjoint and disconnection oph3lia examines the archetype and themes emerging from the character of Ophelia in Shakespeare’s Hamlet in a contemporary and international context:
A young Japanese woman comes to New York City, a complete stranger, and embarks on a mysterious journey through her memory and the anonymous city. Swept up in the rhythms of the foreign city she discovers that she can go through life without ever uttering a word.
Expatriated students in an international Christian girl’s school in China have formed their own insular hierarchy within the school walls — but the arrival of a new teacher and a transfer student threatens its delicate balance.
In the world of entertainment production cultures collide and language collapses. Compromises of artistic and personal integrity punctuate the struggle for voice and power in the creation of “art.” Cultures clash in a theater producer’s office and the translator bears the brunt.
Ludic Proxy (6 actors) – A multi-lingual, multi-media immersive play exploring exploring human survival in the face of disaster and the tenuous line between memory, reality and fantasy:
Act One: The Past / Pripyat A woman becomes obsessed with a video game when she recognizes its setting as her hometown Pripyat, abandoned after the Chernobyl crisis.
Act Two: The Present / Fukushima A pregnant woman living in the outskirts of the Fukushima nuclear evacuation zone is torn between abandoning her hometown and saving herself and her child.
Act Three: The Future / New York A woman contemplates her own mortality and possible progeny, unable to imagine a hopeful tomorrow within a technology-saturated underground future world.
Bio:
AYA OGAWA is a Brooklyn-based playwright, director, performer and translator whose work reflects an international viewpoint and utilizes the stage as a space for exploring cultural identity, displacement and other facets of the immigrant experience. Cumulatively, all aspects of their artistic practice synthesize their work as an artistic and cultural ambassador, building bridges across cultures to create meaningful exchange amongst artists, theaters and audiences both in the U.S. and in Asia. They challenge traditional notions of the American aesthetic and identity by creating performances infused with a multiplicity of perspectives and languages, and by incorporating influences from outside the U.S. – of style, form, and content. As a theater-maker, they frequently uses a collaborative creative process with performers and designers and pushes the form with an eye not only on spoken text, but physicality, musicality, and interactivity.
As playwright/director in New York City, Ogawa’s 2003 A GIRL OF 16 (Clemente Soto Velez Cultural Center) was hailed by The New York Times for its “stunning visual sense.” Their 2008 OPH3LIA (HERE) was called “riotously alive…great theater” by The New York Times. Their ARTIFACT was featured in CUNY’s 2007 Prelude Festival and the 2009 Performance Mix Festival (Joyce Soho). They were commissioned by The Foundry Theatre to create a work in collaboration with Adhikaar, a human rights organization serving the US Nepali community. The resulting piece, JOURNEY TO THE OCEAN, was presented by The Rubin Museum in 2011. Their play LUDIC PROXY commissioned by The Play Company, explored humankind’s relationship to technology (from nuclear power to VR and video games) through the events of Chernobyl, Fukushima, and into the future. Its 2015 premiere at WalkerSpace was described as “beautifully conceived” by the NYTimes. They were a playwright in residence at The New Museum for X:ID a research-driven pop-up repertory theater designed to examine the shifting ethical boundaries surrounding intercultural cross-play on contemporary American stages. Most recently, they wrote, directed and performed in the 6-person cast for her play THE NOSEBLEED (formerly titled Failure Sandwich) at the Incoming! Series at the Public Theater’s Under the Radar Festival 2019 and directed Haruna Lee’s play SUICIDE FOREST in its world premiere production at The Bushwick Starr in 2019 and its off-Broadway remount with Ma-Yi in 2020. They also created a digital version of the second act of LUDIC PROXY: FUKUSHIMA during the pandemic, presented by Japan Society. THE NOSEBLEED premiered at Japan Society, co-presented with The Chocolate Factory in October 2021; 9000 Paper Balloons (co-created by Spencer Lott and Maiko Kikuchi) was released as a puppet performance film by HERE in November 2021.
As a translator, they have been commissioned to translate numerous Japanese plays into English that have been produced in the U.S. and London, including over a dozen plays by Toshiki Okada, writer/director of chelfitsch theater company. Time Out called their rendition of Okada’s ENJOY (Play Company at 59E59, 2010; published by Samuel French) an “effortless, idiomatic translation”; The Village Voice hailed their translation of Okada’s FIVE DAYS IN MARCH (Witness Relocation at LaMama, 2010) as “a miracle of transposed idiom.” Their translation of Okada’s ZERO COST HOUSE was presented at Philly Live Arts 2012, Under the Radar Festival 2013 and Yokohama, Japan. They serve on the selection committee for the Japan Playwrights Association’s new publication series Japanese plays in English translation.
Aya has performed nationally and internationally. She originated and performed numerous roles with the International WOW Company including JR Oppenheimer in The Bomb and the title role in Alice’s Evidence. Time Out NY hailed their performance as Chomsky in The Loneliness of Noam Chomsky by the Butane Group. International credits include their role in the world premiere of the award-winning Emperor and Kiss with Rinko-Gun Company, Tokyo; they were selected as part of the artist team representing the U.S. at the International Theater Institute’s 2006 Congress in Manila and 2008 Congress in Madrid for which they co-created and performed in the resulting collaborative pieces; and the European premiere of Young Jean Lee’s Songs of the Dragon Flying to Heaven at the Vienna Festival. Most recently they performed in the first season of Shaina Feinberg’s web series Dinette.
They are the recipient of the MAP Fund grant; President’s Award for Performing Arts, WorkSpace grant and three Swing Space grants from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council; an Artistic Fellowship at New York Theater Workshop (where they are now a Usual Suspect); the Van Lier Fellowship and 2017-2024 Resident Playwright at New Dramatists; a HERE Artist Residency; Artist in Residence 2017-2019, Parent Artist Space Grantee and Space Grantee at Brooklyn Arts Exchange (BAX); recipient of support from NYSCA and the Urban Artist Initiative, and The Women’s Film, TV and Theatre Fund by the City of New York Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment (MOME). They were named one of 6 finalists for the SDCF’s 2021 inaugural Barbara Whitman Award. They have been a guest artist/lecturer at UT Austin, Brown University, Mount Holyoke College, Yale School of Drama, University of Maryland, University of Pittsburgh, New York University, University of Puget Sound, and Stony Brook University, as well as a mentor at The Orchard Project and Clubbed Thumb.
Website: www.ayaogawa.com