Get ready for a night of laughs and literary mashups as Theater Company Kaimaku Pennant Race (KPR) comes to PS21 with their latest production, Hamlet | Toilet. Led by the acclaimed playwright and director Yu Murai, KPR has become known for its nonsensical yet profound style that sensationally weaves Japanese pop culture into reimagined scenes from Shakespearean plays.
Co-presented with Japan Society New York, part of Under the Radar Festival.
“Yu Murai is] among Japan’s most innovative contemporary playwright-directors…” –Asian Theatre Journal
Yu Murai established Kaimaku Pennant Race Theater Company in 2006 in Tokyo. Their first overseas tour in New York in 2009 successfully obtained good reviews and praise from The New York Times and Time Out New York. The Company’s unique spatial composition and staging, such as a huge toilet with 10,000 toilet paper rolls on the stage surrounded by a standing audience, as well as their gonzo street performances have been receiving reviews and gathering attention from all around the world. Their genre-bending view has been described as “hyper-nonsensical absurdist philosophical comedy” by director and translator Yoji Aoi, who has been assisting them as a translator and a dramaturg since 2015.
Co-presented with Japan Society, New York, part of Under the Radar Festival. Photos by Takashi Ikemura.
The North American tour of Hamlet | Toilet is produced and organized by Japan Society, New York, and is supported by The Japan Foundation.
