Ripe Time reimagines Haruki Murakami’s Sleep in inventive theatrical adaptation at BAM (photo ©Julieta Cervantes)
BAM Fisher, Fishman Space
321 Ashland Pl.
November 29 – December 2, $25
718-636-4100
www.bam.org
ripetime.org
In February 2016, Japan Society presented Ripe Time’s work-in-progress adaptation of Japanese author Haruki Murakami’s 1993 short story Sleep as part of the “Women on the Rise” series. The final version is now making its New York City premiere November 29 through December 2 at the BAM Fisher as part of BAM’s Next Wave Festival. The seventy-five-minute experimental, fantastical production is based on Murakami’s (The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Kafka on the Shore) tale of a Japanese housewife who is “both a body on the verge of sleep and a mind determined to stay awake”; the story begins, “This is my seventeenth straight day without sleep. I’m not talking about insomnia.” The multimedia, multidisciplinary show is adapted by Naomi Iizuka (36 Views, Tattoo Girl) and directed and devised by Rachel Dickstein (The World Is Round, Septimus and Clarissa) and Ripe Time, with set design by Susan Zeeman Rogers, projections by Hannah Wasileski, lighting by Jiyoun Chang, sound by Matt Stine, costumes by Ilona Somogyi, and music by NewBorn Trio. The cast features Akiko Aizawa, Brad Culver, Takemi Kitamura, Paula McGonagle, Jiehae Park, and Saori Tsukada. In a program note, Dickstein explains, “In an era where difference is under siege, we hope Sleep’s vision of an ordinary woman tearing down the prison walls of her life as a wife and mother offers a necessary rally cry for us all.”