I am thrilled to be cast in Yukio Mishima’s Black Lizard in which I will be playing Amamiya and other characters to be announced. The piece, translated by Mark Oshima and directed by Yale alum Jesse Jou, stars Yuhua Hamasaki, of RuPaul’s Drag Race fame, as the titular Black Lizard. The staged reading culminates the 2019 season of the Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theatre Festival, where I will already be presenting the previously announced Lady from the Village of Falling Flowers by Williams (and directed by Natsu Onoda Power). The performance will occur on Sunday, September 29, from 10:30am-1:00pm at Town Hall, 260 Commercial Street, Provincetown, Massachusetts. Get tickets here.
Each year the Festival places Williams in conversation with another esteemed playwright in the global theatre canon and programs around that choice. This year focuses on provocative Japanese playwright Yukio Mishima, who became good friends with Williams in the late 1950s. Learn more about the Festival here.
The Black Lizard is Mishima’s outrageous camp classic about a glamorous jewel thief and the handsome detective she enthralls. In this psychedelic mystery set in giddy, groovy, 1960s Japan, we track a battle of wits between private detective Kogoro Akechi and the Black Lizard, the glamorous crime boss who has snatched a rich jeweler’s daughter in hopes the jeweler will exchange her for his prized Star of Egypt diamond.
