| YUKIO MISHIMA
a bizarre life, a grotesque death
Written and directed by ADAM DARIUS
Choreography and visualization by KAZIMIR KOLESNIK
Kazimir Kolesnik as Yukio Mishima
Photograph 2006
Yukio Mishima, Japan's most prolific novelist, was
born in 1925 and spent his earliest years with his ailing grandmother.
Thus, in the constant darkness of that sick room, was cultivated an early
morbidity in the child which, when he grew up, turned into a fascination
with violent death and masochistic sexuality. A man of extreme polarities,
he relished Western culture yet worshipped the Emperor, he was married
with two children, yet was a promiscuous homosexual. When Mishima was 45,
at the peak of his highly cultivated physical powers, the body of his literary
works just completed, he attempted an abortive political overthrow. He
then, along with several members of his private army, committed hari-kiri.
It was a shinju, or lovers' suicide, a public and spectactular act
of self-annihilation that shocked Japan and the rest of the world.
Excerpts from the London press
"Spectacular...a piece of total theatre whose sheer
sensual energy borders on the orgiastic...a ravishing show...a potent work
of art"
Time Out
"Explosive...fantastic ritual...celebrates the man's lyrical morbidity
and savage homo-eroticism"
What's On In London
"Haunting...viscerally powerful...startling"
City Limits
"A powerful story...vigorously enacted in mime, dance and a variety
of languages"
The Guardian |
