May 20 Through June 10: Weekday and Saturday performances at 7:30pm, Sunday Matinees at 4pm
Mezzanine Theatre at the A.R.T./New York Theatres (502 West 53rd Street New York, NY 10019.) 

The Play Company (PlayCo), led by Founding Producer Kate Loewald and Managing Director Robert G. Bradshaw, today announces the complete cast for Toshiki Okada’s Time’s Journey Through a Room, marking PlayCo’s third collaboration with Okada, translator Aya Ogawa, and director Dan Rothenberg, May 10 – June 10, 2018. This haunting play, set in post-Fukushima Japan, will star three Japanese born performers, all of whom are now based in New York: Yuki Kawahisa (Honoka), Maho Honda (Arisa) and Kensaku Shinohara (Kazuki). The play is both an intimate examination of how we move forward from life-altering events, and a study of how we experience time, asking whether we can ever be alive to the present moment.

PlayCo continues its exploration of Okada’s work following Enjoy in 2010 and The Sonic Life of a Giant Tortoise in 2014 with Time’s Journey Through a Room, the third of his plays to meditate on the 2011 earthquake, tsunami and ensuing nuclear accident in Japan. This play reflects the impact the disaster had on the evolution of Okada’s work, mining the event’s transformative effect through his singular vision. While it can be read as a commentary on post-Fukushima Japan, this production also brings the universality of trauma and hope to the fore, resonating deeply with how each of us copes with change.

PlayCo is unique in its commitment to producing an international program of new plays, from both the U.S. and around the world, to advance a dynamic, global experience of contemporary theater and expand the American repertoire. In their continued engagement with Okada’s work, PlayCo has seen the consistent deepening of variations on a theme: Enjoy explored the plight of young workers trying to live with economic and social uncertainty; in The Sonic Life of a Giant Tortoise he probed the everyday lives of 30-something professionals who enjoy good jobs and relationships but are still in an emotional limbo. In Time’s Journey Through a Room, the lives of his characters have been jolted and altered.

The creative team includes Anna Kiraly (Set Design), Maiko Matsushima (Costume Design), Amith Chandrashaker (Lighting Design), and Mikaal Sulaiman (Sound Design).

There will also be a post-performance conversation with playwright Toshiki Okada on the Saturday May 12 a part of PlayCo’s Idea Lab program of conversations and events with artists, scholars and community leaders. Okada will speak about the evolution of his work since the March 2011 earthquake and nuclear disaster in Japan. This event will be free, open to both that evening’s ticket holders and the general public, and will begin at approximately 8:30pm, following the performance.