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    Arigato, Tokyo
    Arigato, Tokyo
    Arigato, Tokyo
    Ebook103 pages1 hour

    Arigato, Tokyo

    By Daniel MacIvor

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    About this ebook

    On a publicity tour in Japan, Carl, a Canadian author, finds himself falling in love amidst the sacred stages of Noh theatre and the seedy dance clubs in Tokyo, wired on cocaine and sake. His object of affection is the young, seductive actor, Yori, but the affair becomes complicated when Carl's translator and Yori's sister, Nushi, becomes entranced with him. As his tour continues, he straddles the fragmentary place between two cultures—one of individuality and directness, the other of tradition and formality—and uncovers the dualities that exist in life and love. Based on The Tale of Genji, one of the world's oldest pieces of literature, MacIvor's script takes us into the centre of a clandestine Japan as experienced by the visiting outsider.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPlaywrights Canada Press
    Release dateNov 7, 2013
    ISBN9781770911895
    Arigato, Tokyo
    Author

    Daniel MacIvor

    Born in Sydney, Cape Breton in 1962, Daniel MacIvor studied theatre at Dalhousie University in Halifax and George Brown College in Toronto. A prolific playwright, dynamic performer, producer, and artistic director, MacIvor has been creating original Canadian theatre since 1986 when he founded the highly acclaimed theatre company da da kamera, which has won a Chalmers Award for Innovation in Theatre (1998). MacIvor is also a successful filmmaker. His projects include the award winning short film The Fairy Who Didn’t Want to Be a Fairy Anymore. His first feature film, Past Perfect (produced by Camelia Frieberg), premiered at the 2002 Toronto International Film Festival and was released in theatres across Canada in March and April of 2003. He also adapted his Governor General’s Award-nominated stage play, Marion Bridge, for the screen (directed by Wiebke von Carolsfeld), for which he won the Best Screenplay Award at the 2002 Atlantic Film Festival. Talonbooks published his play Cul-de-sac in 2005.

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      Book preview

      Arigato, Tokyo - Daniel MacIvor

      Playwrights Canada Press

      Toronto

      Arigato,

      Tokyo

      Daniel

      MacIvor

      Banff Centre Press

      Banff

      Also by Daniel MacIvor:

      One Voice: House and Here Lies Henry

      Never Swim Alone & This Is a Play

      See Bob Run & Wild Abandon

      I Still Love You: Five Plays

      The Soldier Dreams

      The Best Brothers

      Marion Bridge

      His Greatness

      You Are Here

      How It Works

      Cul-de-sac

      In On It

      Monster

      Bingo!

      Arigato, Tokyo © Copyright 2013 by Daniel MacIvor

      Playwrights Canada Press

      202-269 Richmond Street West, Toronto, ON, Canada M5V 1X1

      phone 416.703.0013 • info@playwrightscanada.com • www.playwrightscanada.com

      Banff Centre Press

      The Banff Centre, Box 1020, Banff, AB T1L 1H5

      403.762.6410 • press@banffcentre.ca • www.banffcentrepress.ca

      No part of this book may be reproduced, downloaded, or used in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, except for excerpts in a review or by a licence from Access Copyright, www.accesscopyright.ca.

      For professional or amateur production rights, please contact The Gary Goddard Agency:

      149 Church St., 2nd Floor, Toronto, ON M5B 1Y4

      416.928.0299, meaghan@garygoddardagency.com

      Cover design by Natalie Olsen/Kisscut Design

      Book design by Blake Sproule

      Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

      MacIvor, Daniel, 1962-, author

         Arigato, Tokyo / Daniel MacIvor.

      A play.

      Co-published by: Banff Centre Press

      Electronic monograph.

      Issued in print and electronic formats.

      ISBN 978-1-77091-189-5

      I. Title.

      PS8575.I86A75 2013   C812’.54   C2013-904411-6

         C2013-904412-4

      cip

      We acknowledge the financial support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council (OAC)—an agency of the Government of Ontario, which last year funded 1,681 individual artists and 1,125 organizations in 216 communities across Ontario for a total of $52.8 million—the Ontario Media Development Corporation, and the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for our publishing activities.

      For Kenzo and Noriko

      Preface

      Drama has always been a key component of The Banff Centre’s programming. In its founding year of 1933, at the height of the Great Depression, a two-week program in drama was offered to 190 students. Only a few years later, in 1935, playwriting was officially added to the programs on offer. Because of this history, in preparation for the Centre’s seventy-fifth year of continuous operation, it felt appropriate to commission a new play to celebrate the Centre’s legacy of commitment to the arts and artists; a play that would illustrate the interests and concerns of playwrights in the early years of a new century. More than eighty submissions on a vast array of subjects were received from across Canada, and in April of 2008, Linda Gaboriau, Maureen Labonté, John Murrell, Brian Quirt, and Bob White joined me to select the recipient of the anniversary commission.

      While the task was daunting given the overwhelming richness and quality of the proposed works, the terms of the commission helped to identify a clear favourite: Daniel MacIvor proposed a play that would be a departure for him as a playwright, larger in scope and scale than much of his previous work. Arigato, Tokyo was to be a play about a Canadian writer communicating with a new audience, challenging his understanding of human and cultural differences, and challenging himself as a man and as an artist on a global stage. It has evolved into a play that is exacting, intensely theatrical, and enormously human. It was a good match with the anniversary celebration and a unanimous choice for the jury.

      Fortunately, and happily, the discussions and deliberations did not end there. Despite the breadth of subject matter among the submissions overall, several playwrights responded to Canada’s involvement in the war in Afghanistan. Colleen Murphy proposed Armstrong’s War, a play about the consequences of serving under combat conditions and focusing on a soldier’s return to Canada. Hannah Moscovitch proposed This is War, a play about the immediate effects of battle on the men and women of our armed forces, but, like Colleen, her interest was much broader. Hannah’s play also explores some of the messy human aspects of modern combat, from the difficulty of knowing the enemy to the psychological impact inflicted upon soldiers on the same side of the conflict.

      These were powerful ideas advanced by gifted writers working within a genre that is underrepresented in theatrical literature in this country: the Canadian war play. It seems strange that the performing arts discourse around Canada as a nation at war is largely confined to the media and the political sphere. Enabling

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