| 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 by Kai Sairanen 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 |
