Tsunagu/Connect Live
Tsunagu/Connect Live
23 - 30 April 2022
Shoreditch Town Hall
380 Old Street
London
EC1V 9LT
Promenade performance with limited seating available
Tickets: £16 (£12 concessions)
Running Time: Approx. 75 mins
Age Guidance: 12+
Trigger Warning: Contains some swearing, mild drug references, outdated views (including racism) presented in a historical context
Four Japanese women are your tour guides on a kaleidoscopic journey across continents and decades, from Shōwa era Japan to the bedsits of 90’s London, via the Empire Windrush’s final voyage and present-day immigration nightmares.
Memories. Fears. Aspirations. The women reveal the complex, multi-layered reality of migrants reconciling with rootlessness.
"What price must we pay to create a third space, in neither one nation nor the other, where we finally have room to be ourselves?”
Where exhibition meets performance, Tsunagu/Connect Live is an immersive promenade adventure, inspired and informed by the stories of women who were born in Japan but who have settled in the UK since 1945.
Cast
Tomoko Komura
Meg Kubota
Yuki Sutton
You-Ri Yamanaka
Creatives
Co-Author and Director Kumiko Mendl
Co-Author and Director Kazuko Hohki
Dramaturg and Contributing Writer Stewart Melton
Designer TK Hay
Lighting Designer Nao Nagai
Sound Designer Tingying Dong
Movement Director Sachi Kimura
Production Manager Anna Smith
Stage Manager Zoe Smith
Tsunagu/Connect: The Exhibition
Informed by over 30 interviews with Japanese women who moved to the UK since 1945, the exhibition will give an insider’s view of what their lives were like as they settled nto living in this new land.
Exploring themes of culture, preconceptions, and belonging, Tsunagu/Connect: The Exhibition reveals the joys and struggles, triumphs and hardships of creating a new life in a foreign land. Their stories will amaze, shock and entertain, upending tired stereotypes of Japanese women.
Learn More about the Exhibition HERE.
Tsunagu/Connect: The Oral History Project
Tsunagu/Connect was launched at the Museum of London in January 2020. The launch programme included a presentation on the history of the Japanese community in the UK by historian Keiko Itoh, talks by Museum of London staff and an introduction to the project by Artistic Director of New Earth Theatre Kumiko Mendl. Our Project Manager Kay Stephens held a short workshop to introduce attendees to the concept of oral history and recruit volunteer interviewers.