About the Play:

Ballad of Yachiyo has long been a favourite of acting teachers for Female Monologues, Male Monologues, and Female/Male Scenes (particularly suitable for those over 40 years old).

Ballad of Yachiyo is a full-length drama by Philip Kan Gotanda. A love triangle ensues between a naive girl, a passionate artist and the woman who needs them both. Ballad of Yachiyo is a provocative play about innocence, passion and betrayal, set against the backdrop of a Hawaiian sugar plantation in the early 1900s.

Ballad of Yachiyo takes place in a Japanese immigrant community in Hawaii's harsh sugar-cane plantation system of the early twentieth century. Yachiyo, a young peasant girl, is destined for life in the fields and for a marriage to Willie, a lowly worker. Cashing in on an old family debt, she is sent by her parents to board with a pottery artist, Hiro Takamura, and his wife, on a distant island where she will learn proper Japanese manners and traditions. The education that she receives is more about life's cruelties than its civilities. Hiro, consumed by bitterness over his father's success, is a perfectionist potter stuck in a loveless marriage. While his wife waits for him to learn to love her, she mentors Yachiyo on how to ascend the social ladder and in doing so becomes her confidant. Hiro is inspired by the young visitor and his pottery flourishes as Okusan begins to become suspicious of her husband and Yachiyo's growing fascination with him. The story unfolds with Yachiyo's discovery of life's beauties, her sexual awakening, and ultimate social downfall. In this moving elegy to his own aunt on whose life the story is based, Philip Kan Gotanda juxtaposes the world of traditional Japanese arts, such as pottery and the tea ceremony, with the conflicting social realities of a culture in transition.

Ballad of Yachiyo received its world premiere at Berkeley Repertory and South Coast Repertory theaters and was honoured with the 1996 Pen Center West Award for best new dramatic work. The play was subsequently produced at London's Gate Theatre in co-production with the Royal National Theatre.

Cast: 4 female, 3 male

What people say:

"A genuinely devastatingly great play. This is an exquisite, precise, unsparing perfect play." — Tony Kushner

"A beautiful, colourful, moving play." — Anna Deavere Smith

"Gotanda's writing is superb…a great deal of fine craftsmanship on display here, and much to enjoy." — Variety

"…one of the country's most consistently intriguing playwrights…." — San Francisco Examiner

"As he has in past plays, Gotanda defies expectations…." — Oakland Tribune

About the Playwright:

Philip Kan Gotanda is a third-generation Japanese-American playwright and independent filmmaker who was born and raised in Stockton, California. The creator of one of the largest bodies of Asian American-themed work, his plays are studied and performed at universities and schools across the United States, as well as in Asia and Europe. He holds a law degree from Hastings College of Law, studied pottery in Japan under the late Hiroshi Seto and worked as a musician in a rock band before settling into a career in theatre and more recently film. He lives in San Francisco.