About the Play:

Day Standing on Its Head is a full-length drama by Philip Kan Gotanda. Reality mixes with the past to arouse and comfort a man going through the crises of entering middle age. Day Standing on Its Head is the story of an emotionally inhibited Japanese-American law professor forced to examine his role in a violent student demonstration in his youth.

Day Standing on Its Head is a 'Kafkaesque' play featuring a successful middle-aged Japanese-American law professor named Harry Kitamura. He begins to find his life unravelling when he starts researching a paper about his involvement in a campus strike in the early 1970s. Odd characters with violent and overt sexual impulses begin to invade his night dreams, eventually spilling over into his waking life. Soon he is unable to distinguish between the two worlds, sending him on an uncontrollable ride of obsession and ultimate revelation. The 1960s, the Red Guard, Eric Clapton and a Japanese Peggy Lee impersonator all make their presences known in this tale of a heart lost and a heart found. Day Standing on Its Head is the story of a man trying to come to terms with a hitherto unexamined life.

Day Standing on Its Head premiered in 1993 at Manhattan Theatre Club (MTC) off-Broadway in New York City. The play was produced in 1994 by the Asian American Theater Company in San Francisco.

Cast: 4 female, 5 male (flexible casting)

What people say:

"Philip Kan Gotanda's Day Standing on Its Head is a wonder…It's a beautiful piece of theater … Gotanda has strung his elements together with imagination, grace and sensitivity … he imparts such a fresh, buoyant and humorous touch to the work that it shines with a poignant loveliness, like an array of Japanese lanterns glowing against a dark blue sky." — Oakland Tribune

"…a journey as witty and engaging as it is indirect … elements of fantasy and reality and life and death become tangled in tantalizing ambiguity." — San Francisco Examiner

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.