But a Dream: the Dream of Kitamuru

Fiona Morgan
Daily Staff

Equal parts culturally-rich fantasy play and murder mystery, The Dream of Kitamura is a fun, lighthearted exploration of a family living in the shadow of a mysterious dream.
"This was the only play I ever dreamt," playwright Philip Kan Gotanda told the audience at the Northwest Asian American Theater. The central image of his terrified father pointing at him and his brothers, cringing at the mysterious, fictitious name "Kitamura," haunted Gotanda enough to write the play.
One of Gotanda's early plays, Kitamura is rarely produced, but according to Judith Nihei, the theater's artistic director, it is revered as a classic in the growing, 20-year-old canon of Asian-American drama. Several of Gotanda's other plays, such as Fish Head Soup and Yankee Dawg You Die have been produced in Seattle in the past few years.
When Gotanda received the phone call from Joseph Campbell's New York theater company, Theater of the Open Eye, his distinctly American blend of theatrical styles brought him ground-breaking notoriety. Since Open Eye is dedicated to theater that explores dreams and mythology, the company became interested in his script. Working with Campbell and partner Jean Erdman gave Gotanda the opportunity to develop his instincts toward the blend of cultural images that make up the play's dreamy, non-linear story.
In a time and place in-between ancient Japan and modern day United States, the estate of Rosanjin and his wife Zuma is plagued with a ghost that terrorizes the old man through his dreams. The styles of theater vary from the presentational Japanese Noh theatre to realism, with plenty of familiar plain-spoken comedy in the mix. The pantomime and slow-motion battle sequences, "visual moments," as Gotanda describes them, make up a great deal of the action of Kitamura. Movement and tableaus - like the erotic sharing of a lemon, the repetition of a tea ceremony - follow the logic of a dream. Despite the father's meanness and fear of his eminent death, the production is fun, not taking even the most abstract dream sequences too seriously. The fight choreography is titillating and the repetition of monologues made the audience laugh - somehow, the play never fails to fulfill the circular structure of action.
Nihei recovered the original music from the landmark 1981 Asian American Theater production in San Francisco, directed by the legendary David Henry Hwong, (playwright of classics M. Butterfly and FOB). The music is outstanding and works to create a sense of place and augment the action - at one point, a single recurring sound works as a baby's cry heard in a character's dream. The subtle sound of water dripping in a cave works with the simple set of platforms and flats, the water well and the lights. Synths and guitars drift from traditional Japanese sounds to ambient pop
Gotanda's play is unique in that it gives voice to an Asian-American subconsciousness. The tea ceremonies and samurai swordsmen are not attempts to recreate authentic Japanese culture, but merely to stage images that emerge in the psyche of "students of things Japanese," as the American-born playwright and director identify themselves.
Dream of Kitamura is playing @ Theater Off Jackson ,409 7th Ave. S.
Oct 10-Nov. 10- Thursday-Saturday @ 8 p.m., Sunday @ 4 p.m.
340-1049