HARAJUKU BURLESQUE THEATRE AT JAPAN SOCIETY

Duke Bluebeard’s Castle

Wednesday, January 15 at 7:30 p.m. — Followed by an opening night reception
Thursday, January 16 at 7:30 p.m. — Followed by an artist Q&A
Friday, January 17 at 7:30 p.m.
Saturday, January 18 at 7:30 p.m.

Japan Society – 333 E. 47th Street (between 1st and 2nd Avenues)

Admission: $48 | $36 Japan Society members

Japan Society presents the North American premiere of a new production of Duke Bluebeard’s Castle in partnership with Under the Radar, America’s premier experimental performance festival, celebrating its 20th anniversary this year.

Written by revolutionary Japanese angura (underground) theater artist and multi-hyphenate Shuji Terayama, Duke Bluebeard’s Castle is now re-envisioned by illustrious experimental theater director Kim Sujin and performed by the all-female avant-garde ensemble Project Nyx. As part of Under the Radar 2025, Duke Bluebeard’s Castle will have only four performances. The runtime is 135 minutes and will be performed in Japanese with English supertitles.

Ticketholders for performances on Thursday through Saturday will also receive complimentary, same-day admission for one person to Bunraku Backstage, on view at Japan Society Gallery through Sunday, January 19. To view the exhibition please show ticket/receipt to the Welcome Desk for free admission before the performance. PLEASE NOTE: This exhibit will not be available to the public on Wednesday, January 15. Purchase tickets at Japan Society’s website.

Shuji Terayama's *Duke Bluebeard's Castle* ©Yoji Ishizawa

About Duke Bluebeard’s Castle

In this new take, director Kim Sujin gives the play an entrancing and nightmarish Harajuku burlesque makeover. The 30-member company includes the all-female ensemble Project Nyx, the Gothic-Lolita cabaret music duo Kokusyoku Sumire, and the award-winning magician Syun Shibuya. This stage show further twists Terayama’s aggressively subversive play into a macabre, magic-infused Lolita fashion spectacle saturated with dark magic tricks, fiddlers and accordion players, aerial dance, and more.

Set in the backstage of a theater in Japan, the play begins with the arrival of a character, The Girl Set to Play the Seventh Wife, as a theater troupe prepares to perform a play called Duke Bluebeard’s Castle. Determined to uncover the truth behind the mysterious disappearance of her missing stagehand brother, she becomes trapped in the twists and turns of the script, which weaves metaphysical layers of the Gothic horror over top of the play, drawing into question the very nature of theater itself.

About Shuji Terayama

Throughout his career, Shuji Terayama, a legendary founding figure of Japan’s raucous avant-garde angura theater movement in the 1960s and ’70s, was repeatedly drawn to the French gothic horror Le Barbe Bleue (Bluebeard), a magic-infused folktale about a nobleman who murders his six wives. Terayama’s obsession with the story of Bluebeard’s seventh wife and the mysterious room in Bluebeard’s castle that she is forbidden to enter culminated in this late-career magnum opus script, a twisting game of cat-and-mouse that asks the question: On the theater stage, where magic and the mundane and fantasy and reality freely mix, can anyone truly determine what is truth, and what is a lie? Terayama wrote Duke Bluebeard’s Castle, nominally drawing from Bela Bartók’s famous operatic version of the French legend, and directed it for his company, Tenjo Sajiki, in 1979 at the Seibu Theater in Shibuya, Tokyo. The premiere production was titled Duke Bluebeard’s Castle – from Bartók and was billed by the company as a work full of “fashion, magic, evil, and eroticism.”

Coinciding with the performances on January 15 through 18, rarely seen artifacts of Terayama’s scripts, letters, photos, and other items from the La MaMa Archive will be displayed in Japan Society’s foyer. All items are collected from presentations of Terayama’s work at La MaMa Experimental Theater Club, including La Marie-Vision, directed by Terayama himself and performed by American actors in 1970, and Directions to Servants, by Terayama’s Tenjo Sajiki company in 1980.

About Kim Sujin

Multiple award-winning director Kim Sujin has garnered an international reputation for his experimental theater productions and is recognized as a direct inheritor of the angura movement from founders such as Juro Kara and Shuji Terayama. After graduating from Tokai University, Kim studied under director Yukio Ninagawa and was a member of the Ninagawa Studio, where he learned the basics of theater by appearing in productions such as Chikamatsu Shinju Monogatari (The Tale of Chikamatsu).

In 1978, he joined Juro Kara's company, Jokyo GekijoTheater. He received direct instruction from Ninagawa and Kara, two leading figures in the "underground small theater" scene. Kim quickly established himself through his distinct “tent theater” performances, a unique style of experiential theater inherited from Juro Kara. Kim later founded his theater company, Shinjuku Ryozanpaku, in 1987. He has been directing all of Shinjuku Ryozanpaku productions since the company's launch and is recognized for his dynamic directional skills that make full use of the tent and theater space. Since its inception, the company has travelled across the world. The company had its US debut in 1999 with Kara’s A Cry from the City of Virgins, presented at Japan Society.

Starting in 2016 and continuing over several years, Kim directed Juro Kara's major plays, including Vinyl Castle, Kara-ban Kaze no Matasaburo, Mud Mermaid, and A Cry from the City of Virgins, for the prestigious venue Theater Cocoon in Tokyo as a materialization of the late Yukio Ninagawa's wish. In 2023, he won the 57th Kinokuniya Theatre Award for Individual Achievement, and this year, Kinokuniya Theatre announced the Group Achievement Award to Kim’s Shinjuku Ryozanpaku for its 59th Award. Kim has served as the resident director of Project Nyx’s productions since its founding in 2006. He continues to direct productions around the world and is currently a visiting professor at Chonju National University in Korea.

About Project Nyx

Based on the art and costumes of Akira Uno and the direction of Kim Sujin, Project Nyx was founded in 2006 by Kanna Mizushima, an actress and company member of Shinjuku Ryōzanpaku who plays the role of The Fifth Wife in Duke Bluebeard’s Castle. This all-female experimental theater unit breathes life into art that has drifted into obscurity or oblivion, ranging from timeless masterpieces to lesser-known gems, and reviving them as contemporary performances with an avant-garde spin.

Project NYX has also been recognized in Japan as a current leading interpreter of Japanese angura theater, revitalizing these works in the twenty-first century. By bringing together artists from various genres, Project NYX aims to create new entertainment that transcends the expected boundaries of theater, merging music, dance, and fine art. Since its inception, it has promoted an "exquisite entertainment theater" with a mysterious, glamorous, and avant-garde visual style, continuously expressing the beauty and strength of women. In recent years, Project Nyx has also taken on the challenge of developing "female kabuki," creating a style that blurs, crosses, and transcends preconceived gender boundaries and gender roles on and around the theater stage.

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