COOKING UP (KOSHIRAERU
Japan Society
333 East Forty-Seventh St. at First Ave.
Monday, December 6, $10/$15, 7:30
japansociety.org
Japan Society will present the sixteenth installment of its annual play reading series, “Contemporary Japanese Plays in English Translation,” with Shoko Matsumura’s Cooking Up, directed by Jordana De La Cruz. Originally scheduled for March 2020 and postponed because of the pandemic lockdown, the staged reading will take place December 6 at 7:30. The story, which combines the surreal with naturalism, is set in a restaurant where the pastry chef is missing, the cook is cheating on his wife, and his mistress becomes a housecat. “Every time you think you understand the story line or the plot, something else happens,” the Brooklyn-based De La Cruz (Jack) says in a Japan Society video. “It’s a very intricate play, and it’s powerful, and it talks about isolation and companionship and really makes you think about the people that you have in your corner.”
The Yokohama-born Matsumura (Hanpuku to Junkan ni Fuzui suru Bon’yari no Boken) has acted with Toshiki Okada’s chelfitsch company and founded her own troupe, Momeraths, in 2013. Translated by Amanda Waddell, Cooking Up is part of Japan Society’s fiftieth anniversary celebration honoring New York City woman writers with ties to Japan and will be followed by an audience Q&A with De La Cruz.