Current, In Development and Future
The Man from Fukushima
Created and Written by Kazuko Hohki
Design and Dramaturgy by Andy Cox
Music by Clive Bell, Andy Cox and Kazuko Hohki
Lighting by Nao Nagai
Performed by Kazuko Hohki with live music accompaniment from Clive Bell and Andy Cox
Drawing on the Fukushima nuclear power plant meltdown in Japan and pop culture icon Godzilla, The Man from Fukushima will be a quirky, funny, otherworldly but deeply poignant and universal story that explores the themes of identity, loss, family, relationship with homeland and the stories we tell ourselves to make sense of the world. The show will unfold employing Kazukos trademark performance style of funny but poignant storytelling, coupled with lo-fi multi media projections, object animation and live music and song.
The Man from Fukushima has been in development since 2013; having commenced its journey as a short film it has progressed to become a new theatre show, in development in London at Camden Peoples Theatre and The Albany.
Grave Encounter
Created by Kazuko Hohki
Design and Dramaturgy by Andy Cox
Music by Andy Cox and Kazuko Hohki
Lighting by Nao Nagai
Devised and performed by Kazuko Hohki, Andy Cox, Nao Nagai, Yoko Nishimura and Toshiko Kurata
The show about death performed in a graveyard. Four women appear carrying a coffin and communicate with the audience about the death without words. The coffin speaks. The women offer you some tea. The show was made with Without Walls R and D grant to explore the potentiality of outside performance and work in progress show was performed at Abney Park Cemetery in October 2014.
Last Night I Dreamed I Was an Eskimo
Created and Performed by Kazuko Hohki, Mervyn Millar and Robert Storey
A Kazuko Hohki and Nordland Visual Theatre Norway Co-production
Lost kayaks. The roar of the ice-bear. A woman and a baby left behind.
Mysterious coloured lights. A woman and baby left behind. A misbehaving moon.
A hero, an opportunist, and a dancing Eskimo chief. Utter loneliness. And the ghosts of the artic ice.
Last Night I Dreamed I was an Eskimo was created in collaboration with Nordland Visual Theatre located in the Lofoten Islands in the Artic North of Norway, where a series of research, development and production residencies were undertaken. The show premiered at NVT in January 2010 and subsequently toured across the Nordland region of Northern Norway before returning to the region for the Stamsund International Theatre Festival in Summer 2010. Thus far, the production has never been presented outside of Norway. In 2014 and 2015 Kazuko Hohki will be revisiting the production to explore a remount for presentation in the UK and internationally from 2015.
Repertoire (available for touring)
The Great Escape, A Borrowers Tale (2010 )
Created and conceived by Kazuko Hohki
Written, designed and performed by Kazuko Hohki and Andy Cox
A BAC production
Kazuko’s first production created for children (ages 6-11), The Great Escape – A Borrowers Tale is a detective adventure in miniature inspired by The Borrowers by Mary Norton and Kazukos adult promenade production Evidence for the Existence of Borrowers.
A children only promenade production, incorporating interactive installations, alongside multimedia, original songs, storytelling and a concert on miniature handmade instruments. The audience of children are led on a fully supervised adventure journeying into a series of specially prepared spaces containing interactive exhibits and installations, on a quest for Bob the Borrower, discovering tiny clues and helping him escape the evil clutches of the KBD (Keep Borrowers Down movement).
The Great Escape, A Borrowers Tale was developed through creative residencies at a series of schools in London and has been presented for multiple seasons in London at Battersea Arts Centre, Chats Palace, the Southbank Centre and Perth International Arts Festival.
“Your children are likely to remember it for years.” The Guardian
Evidence for the Existence of Borrowers
A collaboration between Kazuko Hohki, Andy Cox and Mervyn Millar.
Developed with Tom Morris.
Co-commissioned by BAC and MAC, Developed at BAC and University of Kent
Inspired by Mary Nortons classic childrens novel The Borrowers, Evidence for the Existence of Borrowers is a multi award winning, site responsive promenade production, which incorporates interactive installations, alongside multimedia, original songs, storytelling and a concert on miniature handmade instruments.
The performance is framed around the fictional story of how Kazuko, in 2002, gave up a lucrative career as a research chemist in Japan to set up the Borrowers International Network (BIN), to find evidence for the existence of the small people who live under the floorboards. During the show Kazuko and her collaborators invite an intimate audience (approx. 15) on a tour around a building, journeying into a series of specially prepared spaces containing interactive exhibits and installations, to explore the unique world and culture of the borrowers, in search for Evidence for the Existence of Borrowers.
Evidence for the Existence of Borrowers was presented in London and toured across the UK, including appearances at festivals including Fierce festival, Liverpool Biennial, Belfast Festival and the 2005 British Council Showcase. It also sowed the creative seeds for Kazukos first production for Children – The Great Escape, A Borrowers Tale.
Winner Herald Angel Award
Winner Total Theatre Awards for Innovation
“This promenade piece is a delight. its strength lies in the ingenious artistic concept, the meticulous making skills, the music and engaging performances that brings the audience into its alternative reality with a complete suspension of disbelief.” Total Theatre
Incontinental (2012 )
Created and Performed by Kazuko Hohki, Colin Carmichael, Lewis Barfoot and Alastair Forbes in collaboration with Andy Cox and Nao Nagai
Music by Max Hallett
Supported by Wellcome Trust
In Incontinental Kazuko and her collaborators invite an audience to join them for a cabaret of stories, situations, song, science and a spot of ballroom dancing to explore everyday control and what it means to loose it. Breaking one of the last great taboos, the show explores the subject of faecal incontinence Ð something that one in one hundred people suffer from at some point in their lives but few will talk about, even with their doctors.
Incontinental was developed in collaboration with Professor Alastair Forbes and the Gastroenterology team at University College Hospital London and Artists Colin Carmichael, Lewis Barfoot, Andy Cox and Max Hallett and features performances from these artists AND Professor Forbes. Developed largely at University College Hospital London, Inconinental was supported by the Wellcome Trust and alongside performances in theatre and science settings at Camden Peoples Theatre and University College Hospital London; the show has subsequently been presented as part of the SICK! Festival at the Basement, Brighton and Latitude Festival. Kazuko Hohki and Professor Forbes have contributed to a number of science and arts conferences exploring collaborative artistic works between artists and scientists.
“A gutsy and gentle piece of theatre.” Total Theatre
My Husband is a Spaceman
Created and performed by Kazuko Hohki
Directed by Arlette George
Music by Clive Bell, Christopher Koh and Tim Hope
Developed at BAC.
A solo show with live musical accompaniment, featuring storytelling, film, animation and object animation, My Husband is a Spaceman tells the story of a Japanese Office Lady who is content with her single life, having abandoned any expectation of meeting Mr Right. This is before she encounters Robin, an eccentric English anthropologist, who she meets in Tokyo. They fall in love, get married and move to England. But married life is not as she expects.
My Husband is a Spaceman is derived from an old Japanese folk rake of love between a peasant and a crane and based on Kazukos experience (to some extent) of cross-cultural relationships, loneliness and how to survive it.
The show was presented over multiple seasons in London including performances in the Linbury Studio at the Royal Opera House, toured across the UK, featuring in the British Council Edinburgh Showcase 2003 and toured internationally to Ireland, Israel, Malta, Netherlands, Singapore, Slovenia, Switzerland and USA.
“Beguiling. Tongue-in-cheek techno-trickery, idiosyncratic and gently innovative, this is a delightful trip into an imaginative universe, where among other attributes Ð one hour feels like five minutes.” Evening Standard
“Beguiling blend of insightful, contemporary comment and fanciful timeless storytelling.” Metro
Toothless (1998-2006)
Created and Performed by Kazuko Hohki
Written by Kazuko Hohki and Tim Hope
Directed by Tim Hope
Music by Tim Hope and Clive Bell
Kazuko Hohkis mother was a Priestess in a modern Japanese religion. She loved it, she could tell jokes.
In Toothless, Kazuko presents a witty and poignant examination of a relationship with a mother, a country, with life and with death. Incorporating song, live music accompaniment, animation, puppetry and enchanting storytelling, Toothless is funny, moving, charming and unexpected.
The show was presented in London and toured across the UK and internationally.
“A complex and fascinating exercise in modern tragi-comedy.” The Times
“Genuinely moving. Most poignant was her honesty with us. Often hilarious, in her forthright narrative of her Mothers life and death.” The Herald
Previous Performances
Worlds By Women (2018)
Participatory project commissioned by Jacksons Lane, working with students from St Thomas More secondary school, Christ Collage Finchley, and Hornsey School For Girls, collaborating with director Katie Posner and writer Yolanda Mercy. The show about Suffragette, depicting its past, present and future .
Crossing Tottenham (2018)
Participatory project commissioned by Tottenham Now project, produced by Susan Ibreck, working with Earlsmead primary school students. The show about the diversity of Tottenham performed in Barney Grant Arts Centre.
Heritage Horror (2018)
Participatory project commissioned by Jacksons Lane, working with St Thomas More secondary school students. The show about 18th century theatre performed in Alexandra Palace.
The Dream House Fair (2017)
Participatry project commissioned by LIFT, working with Northumberland Park Community School and The Vale students. The show about re-generation performed in Tottenham’s Living Room at 639.
Writ In Water (2017)
Participatory project commissioned by Jacksons Lane, working with St Thomas More secondary school students. The show about Keats performed in Keats House, Hampstead.
One Night Only (2015)
Participatory project commissioned by Jacksons Lane, working with St Thomas More secondary school students. The show about Wood Green Empire performed in Matelan shop in Wood Green (the site of the theatre) .
Tottenham Travesties (2011)
Created and Performed by Kazuko Hohki and Andy Cox
Commissioned by Birmingham Repertory Theatre
An interactive performance response to Tom Stoppard’s Travesties, created for “Rep at the Old Rep Theatre” season for Birmingham presented at the Old Rep.
Kazuko Hohki’s Wuthering Heights
A collaboration between Kazuko Hohki and Colin Carmichael
Music by Clive Bell
Co-commissioned by and developed at Farnham Maltings, Birmingham Repertory Theatre and BAC.
Inspired by Emily Brontes seminal novel, Kazuko revisits this classic tale to, with a little help from performer Colin Carmichael present her very own take on love, delusion, passion, death and farming as seen through the eyes of a Japanese tourist and some very curious sheep. Specifically made as a small-scale theatre production suitable for rural touring.
Oh Doh (Kings Road)
Created by Kazuko Hohki and Tom Bowtell
Music by Clive Bell
Commissioned by Chelsea Theatre
Oh Doh is a site responsive promenade production, created for the Kings Road of London. Framed around the notion of endings, during the course of a performance an intimate audience of approximately 15, are taken along a street, led by Kazuko Hohki. Along the way, the familiar, historical and fictional worlds of that street intertwine via a weave of stories, performances, installations and interventions. The audience are guided into a number of familiar and unexpected sites along the street, with the piece culminating at a site were the audience are offered the chance to journey onto Utopia.
Originally created for the Worlds End area in Chelsea, London, the original production saw Kazuko take the audience on a journey along the Kings Road. Sites that were visited and used for the original performances included designer boutique shops, an ancient burial ground, a parliamentary party club, a pub, an apartment, a theatre and a chocolatarie. The performance was comprised of a core cast of 5, including Kazuko Hohki and a further ensemble of up to 20 volunteer performers.
The Shining Princess (1999-2004)
Created by Kazuko Hohki and Tim Hope
Commissioned by Bluecoat Arts Centre
A solo show, inspired by a Japanese folk tale of Kaguyahime (The Moon Princess), about a women who believes she is a moon princess waiting for the moon people to come to collect her.
The show was presented in London, toured across the UK and was developed into a radio play S for BBC Radio 4.