The Playwrights Database
CHIORI MIYAGAWA
Nationality:
USA
email:
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Website:
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Literary Agent:
Elaine Devlin Literary, Inc.
Chiori Miyagawa's plays have been seen off-Broadway, at renowned performance spaces in NYC, and regionally, and published in six different play anthologies. Her work has been supported by many grants and fellowships including McKnight Playwriting Fellowship, New York Foundation for the Arts Playwriting Fellowship, Van Lier Playwriting Fellowship, Multi-Arts Production Fund (twice), Asian Cultural Council Fellowship, and Rockefeller Bellagio Residency. She is an active member of the Dramatists Guild, a Usual Suspect of New York Theatre Workshop, a co-founder of Crossing Jamaica Avenue, Resident Playwright of New Dramatists, and serves on the board of ART/N.Y.
Research: Member of the Dramatists Guild of America (as at 2015)
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America Dreaming
Synopsis:
Yuki, a young Asian American woman, suddenly finds herself time traveling through a fictitious version of American history. She travels to the time of the Great Depression, WWII, the Vietnam War, the Korean War, and the future. Each period contains false memories, historical inaccuracies, and fragments of truth. She is returned to the present when she finds something like her identity.
Notes:
Music by Tan Dun. Commissioned by Music-theatre Group
1st Produced:
The Vineyard Theatre
1995
Organisations:
-
1st Published:
in Global Foreigners, Seagull Books, 2006 -
Music:
-
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Genre:
play with music and songs
Parts:
Male: 5 Female: 7 Other: -
Further Reference:
-
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Antigone Project, The
Synopsis:
By Tanya Barfield, Karen Hartman, Chiori Miyagawa, Lynn Nottage and Caridad Svich
Notes:
-
1st Produced:
Women's Project Theater, NY
2004
Organisations:
Women's Project
1st Published:
No Passport Press, CA (2009) -
Music:
-
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Genre:
Play/Drama
Parts:
Male: 2 Female: 4 Other: -
Further Reference:
-
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Antigone's Red
Set in a relocation camp for Japanese citizens during World War II, the play examines Sophocles's question of the state authority versus individual rights, through the abuse practiced on the incarcerated Japanese Americans and different choices that the characters make to survive the hardship and racial discrimination.
Notes:
-
1st Produced:
Virginia Tech
2005
Organisations:
-
1st Published:
Contained in: "Take Ten !! More Ten Minute Plays" published by Vintage 2003 978-14000321174
Music:
-
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Genre:
play Ten Min
Parts:
Male: 1 Female: 2 Other: -
Further Reference:
-
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Awakening
Synopsis:
Inspired by Kate Chopin's novel, the Awakening. the play is about a desire for an eternal existence. Chopin appears as a character and watches her novel on stage as she writes it, lives in 1899 as well as ceaselessly, and is almost interchangeable with her own heroin, Edna. She exists to live and die her own life, which had already happened in real time, but also to live Edna's, as time rewinds and fast-forwards in fictional time. Throughout the play, the novel is both in the process of being written and already completed.
Notes:
by Chiori Miyagawa, Lyrics by Mark Campbell And music by Daniel Sonnenberg
1st Produced:
Performance Space 122
2000
Organisations:
Crossing Jamaica Avenue
1st Published:
- -
Music:
-
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Genre:
Play with Songs
Parts:
Male: 3 Female: 4 Other: -
Further Reference:
-
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Broken Morning: Stories from the Death Row Factory
Synopsis:
Broken Morning is a fictional play based on interviews with men on death row at the Huntsville prison; a woman on death row in the Gatesville prison, TX. the play takes place in the sewing factory at the Ellis One Unit of the prison where men awaiting execution go to work every weekday. Interwoven with their stories of violence, poverty and demons are the stories of people who surround the business of death row and the sorrow and hopes of the victims' families.
Notes:
written by Chiori Miyagawa. the play contains songs: lyrics by Mark Campbell And music by Daniel Sonnenberg.
1st Produced:
Organisations:
Crossing Jamaica Avenue
1st Published:
http://www.indietheaternow.com/Play/broken-morning -
Music:
-
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Genre:
Play with Songs 75 min
Parts:
Male: 3 Female: 2 Other: -
Further Reference:
-
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Comet Hunter
Synopsis:
Comet Hunter is based on the life of the first recognized woman astronomer in history, Caroline Herschel. Born in 1750 in Hanover, Germany, Caroline followed her brother William, the celebrated astronomer, to England when she was twenty-two. She was a strange looking woman, her growth stunted at age twelve from typhus. She devoted her life to assisting her brother and never married. the play is a story of about a brother and a sister who share the celestial enchantment. Caroline is guided by a prophet, a woman, who is "Time", who makes hope for the future and healing of memories possible.
Notes:
Alfred P. Sloan Science & Technology commission
1st Produced:
First Light, Ensemble Studio Theatre
2002
Organisations:
-
1st Published:
- -
Music:
-
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Genre:
Play/Drama
Parts:
Male: 1 Female: 4 Other: -
Further Reference:
-
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Cute Cats
Synopsis:
after Chekhov's The Proposal
Notes:
-
1st Produced:
-
Organisations:
-
1st Published:
- -
Music:
-
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Genre:
short play
Parts:
Male: - Female: - Other: -
Further Reference:
-
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Dividing Ashes
Synopsis:
Erica witnesses a man fall through a crack of ice and drawn in Central Park on the coldest day of the winter. Two week later, she falls into a manhole without a scratch, and it occurs to her that now-at age thirty-three-is the right time for her to plan her death. the play revolves around her deciding where her ashes are to be scattered. She chooses multiple locations based on various reasons, historical and hystErical. People both dead and alive visit her during her emotional process of dividing ashes, and through this experience, she realizes something about her life, everyone's life, and everyone's death.
Notes:
Premiere rights Available
1st Produced:
-
Organisations:
-
1st Published:
- -
Music:
-
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Genre:
Play/Drama
Parts:
Male: - Female: 2 Other: -
Further Reference:
-
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Dream Acts
Synopsis:
Imagine that you don't have a country. It doesn't matter if you believe you're American, because no one else believes you - not potential employers, not banks that issue student loans, not the government. there is no way to become legally American. You don't exist. Worse, you are hunted for deportation. You love this country, but the country does not love you back. In Dream Acts, five undocumented teens from Nigeria, Mexico, Ukraine, Korea, and Jordan face the extraordinary challenge of living ordinary lives under the radar. Each story is moving and urgent; some are funny, others are tragic, and through their experiences, we learn about facts about the DREAM Act and the secret lives lead by undocumented youth.
- nytheatre.com
Notes:
written by Mia Chung, Jessica Litwak, Chiori Miyagawa, Saviana Stanescu, Andrea Thome
1st Produced:
Organisations:
Dream Act Union
1st Published:
http://www.indietheaternow.com/Plays -
Music:
-
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Genre:
piece
Parts:
Male: 2 Female: 3 Other: -
Further Reference:
-
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FireDance
Synopsis:
Alice is a waitress in New York City. Her brother Peter is homeless. Their mother Anna is missing. Alice meets a mysterious stranger who pretends that they are a couple. This man, Matt, is haunted by a ghost who is an everywomana shape-shifting incarnation of ordinary women from the U.S. past. A haunting, homeless, waitressing, unemployed, missing, murdering, suicide love story.
Notes:
-
1st Produced:
Voice & Vision Theater @ the Connelly Center
01 Feb 1997
Organisations:
-
1st Published:
- -
Music:
-
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Genre:
One Act, Full-length Drama
Parts:
Male: 5 Female: 4 Other: -
Further Reference:
-
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I Came to Look for You on Tuesday
Synopsis:
Told in fragments, Chiori Miyagawa's emotionally raw new play I Came to Look for You on Tuesday traces the journeys of twenty characters that lose someone following natural disaster or war. For Maia, reunion with her mother, who was swept away by the tsunami, is impossible. She seeks her mother's spirit by swimming across the largest lake in the world.
Notes:
-
1st Produced:
Organisations:
A Re/Union Company Production
1st Published:
- -
Music:
-
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Genre:
Play/Drama
Parts:
Male: - Female: - Other: -
Further Reference:
-
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I Have Been To Hiroshima Mon Amour
Synopsis:
the story revolves around two love stories: one between a Japanese man, who returns from fighting in WWII to Hiroshima, and a Japanese woman who dies instantly at the moment of the detonation of the atomic bomb on August 6, 1945, played out in memories; and the other between him and a French actress in 1959 in "restored" Hiroshima. the Japanese woman character (or her "ghost") time-travels to 1959 to act in a film about peace that the French actress is shooting and haunts the second love story. the play is about the singular tragedy of atomic war told through personal losses of three characters
Notes:
Written by Chiori Miyagawa as a rebuttal to the 1959 French film Hiroshima Mon Amour
1st Produced:
Ohio Theatre, NY
01 May 2009
Organisations:
Voice & Vision Theater
1st Published:
http://www.indietheaternow.com/Plays -
Music:
-
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Genre:
Play/Drama
Parts:
Male: 1 Female: 2 Other: Japanese voice-over
Further Reference:
-
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Jamaica Avenue
Synopsis:
Jamaica Avenue is a play that combines realism with magic. It is about three intertwining and transforming lives: a man, a spirit who comes back as a woman, and a woman who becomes ghost. their stories about drug addiction, stealing, hurting, longing, finding, and surviving span fourteen years of love, disappointment, and hope.
Notes:
-
1st Produced:
Organisations:
Crossing Jamaica Avenue
1st Published:
in Tokens? the NYC Asian American Experience on Stage, Asian American Writers Workshop, 1999 -
Music:
-
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Genre:
Play/Drama
Parts:
Male: 1 Female: 2 Other: -
Further Reference:
-
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Leaf
Synopsis:
Leaf takes place in present day Tucson, AZ. Leaf, a forensic anthropologist, comes back to her hometown to find out that her high school friend Sharon has died. She suspects that her friend, who was mentally ill, was murdered by her own family. She contacts a local reporter, David Forster, and together, they set off to discover the true cause of Sharon's death. During this process, a vague portrait of Sharon is constructed based on the memories of others who once knew her. Leaf is a play about memory and identity. Leaf knows her own fate; soon she will lose her memory because of a rare condition of early-onset Alzheimer's disease. the play explores how we all depend on the fragile nature of human memory to give us immortality.
Notes:
-
1st Produced:
Reading At New Dramatists
2006
Organisations:
-
1st Published:
- -
Music:
-
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Genre:
Play/Drama
Parts:
Male: 1 Female: 2 Other: -
Further Reference:
-
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Leaving Eden: A Chekhovian Tragicomedy
Synopsis:
Leaving Eden is a new play inspired by Chekhov's life and stories. Fifteen characters appear and disappear and reappear in Russia over a span of twenty-five years (1880-1905); and then somehow they all end up at a wedding reception in New York City in the present. the characters are at once comic and tragic and their journeys complex in the tradition of Chekhov.
Notes:
Reading, Mondays@3 At New York theatre Workshop (2006); Workshop At Teatro Vista (Chicago), 2007
1st Produced:
The Meadows School Of The Arts/ Southern Methodist University,
2006
Organisations:
Teatro Vista New Play Festival
1st Published:
- -
Music:
-
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Genre:
Play/Drama
Parts:
Male: 3 Female: - Other: -
Further Reference:
-
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Nothing Forever
Synopsis:
One woman's expressionistic voyage through the cluttered terrain of unresolved memories, alienation and uncertain hope.
Notes:
Lyrics by Mark Campbell, music by Fabian Obispo
1st Produced:
New York Theatre Workshop
1996
Organisations:
-
1st Published:
in Positive/Negative: Women of color and HIV/AIDS, Aunt Lute Books, 2002 -
Music:
-
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Genre:
Play with Songs
Parts:
Male: 1 Female: 2 Other: -
Further Reference:
-
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Private Recital, A
Synopsis:
-
Notes:
-
1st Produced:
-
Organisations:
-
1st Published:
- -
Music:
-
To Buy This Play:
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Genre:
One act
Parts:
Male: 2 Female: - Other: -
Further Reference:
-
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Red Again
Synopsis:
Red Again, takes place in two places simultaneously - one is the serene underworld where Antigone and her lover Haemon find themselves after their deaths, and the other is the world of the living where Antigone's sister Irene is left alone with the consequences of choosing to live. While the world disintegrates around her, time collapses and Irene experiences World War I, Japanese occupation of Manchuria, Vietnam War, Gulf War, and 9.11 all at the same time, as if caught in a loop of a terrifying movie called modern human history. But in underground, Antigone finds books that correspond to the lives in the world of the living and finds hope in the unfinished stories.
Notes:
the play is part of A full-length play in five parts, written by five writers, called Antigone Project
1st Produced:
Women's Project
2005
Organisations:
-
1st Published:
- -
Music:
-
To Buy This Play:
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Genre:
play Ten Min
Parts:
Male: 1 Female: 2 Other: -
Further Reference:
-
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Resisting Forgetting
Synopsis:
-
Notes:
-
1st Produced:
-
Organisations:
-
1st Published:
- -
Music:
-
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Genre:
-
Parts:
Male: - Female: - Other: -
Further Reference:
-
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This Lingering Life
Synopsis:
At turns poignant and hilarious, like the classic Noh plays which inspired it, This Lingering Life looks at the human condition through the Buddhist concept of Karma and explores deep human desires and attachments. Taking place in the present time in someplace like the U.S.except when it happens elsewhere or in an ancient eraThis Lingering Life follows the journeys of a woman with tragic hair, feudal warriors, a mother whose son was kidnapped, a blind beggar, dead lovers, an old man in love with a teenager, a boy whose father is an arrow, and other sentient beings as they seek answers to Life's biggest questions.
Notes:
This play was supported by a Radcliffe Institute Fellowship at Harvard University and developed at Lark Play Development Center's Playground Program and New Dramatists' Creativity Fund Workshop.
1st Produced:
Z Space, San Francisco
01 Jun 2014
Organisations:
-
1st Published:
- -
Music:
-
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Genre:
drama
Parts:
Male: - Female: - Other: -
Further Reference:
-
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Thousand Years Waiting
Synopsis:
Thousand Years Waiting is a storytelling piece with original music and movement, threading three generations of women's memories through time and space. A woman today, in New York City, is reading a memoir written one thousand years ago by a woman in Japan; the woman writing her memoir in old Japan is reading the Tale of Genji. the history of storytelling is woven like a spider's web, and the woman in present step in and out of real and fictional worlds in the past.
Notes:
Original music by Bruce Odland
1st Produced:
P.S. 122, NY
2006
Organisations:
Crossing Jamaica Avenue
1st Published:
http://www.indietheaternow.com/Plays -
Music:
-
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Genre:
Play with Music
Parts:
Male: - Female: 3 Other: -
Further Reference:
-
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Way to Curacao
Synopsis:
A partially whimsical play about memories of tragedies. Way to Curacao begins in August 1940 in Lithuania, where Japanese Ambassador Sugihara has exactly 29 days to hand-write thousands of transit visas for Jewish refugees to go through Japan, to reach the Caribbean island of Curacao, where no entry visa is needed. No one would choose to leave Japan after a long Trans-Siberian Railway journey and a boat ride to the port of Kobe. More than 70 years later in NYC, a mother and a daughter who have never met Sugihara try to preserve, dismantle, and ultimately, rebuild memory of him.
Notes:
The play was developed at Lark Play Development Center's Winter Retreat Program, at Weston Playhouse Retreat, and received a workshop at New Dramatists, supported by the Creativity Fund.
1st Produced:
-
Organisations:
-
1st Published:
- -
Music:
-
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Genre:
One Act, Full Length Drama
Parts:
Male: 2 Female: 2 Other: -
Further Reference:
-
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Winter's Captive, A
Synopsis:
Miguel Angel Flores, a 23-year-old homeless undocumented immigrant, falls to his death through the ice of a pond in Central Park. No one reports him missing. Erica, the only witness, is thrown into a whirlwind journey from Jamestown to the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory to the trial of Ethel Rosenbergaccompanied by the stranger, Migueluntil she must make a decision about her own life.
Notes:
he play was developed by HotINK Festival, Fire Dept. Lark Play Development Center, and New Dramatists.
1st Produced:
-
Organisations:
-
1st Published:
- -
Music:
-
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Genre:
One Act, Full-length Drama/Comedy
Parts:
Male: 2 Female: 2 Other: -
Further Reference:
-
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Woman Killer
Adopted from the 1721 Japanese Bunraku puppet play by Chikamatsu, Woman Killer is the story of two ordinary upper-class American families and a terrible tragedy that destroys their lives. A young man strays so far from the life that he was meant to live that in a moment of despair, he kills a neighbor for money. This desperate act erupts at the end of a long personal descent riddled with debt, rage, and jealousy. the play explores the nature of human violence from both perspectives of the trauma, the aggressor's and the victim's; and transcends time, place, and culture to portray a sobering story of a murder, too familiar in the society in which we live today.
Notes:
-
1st Produced:
Organisations:
Crossing Jamaica Avenue
1st Published:
Music:
-
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Genre:
Play/Drama
Parts:
Male: 5 Female: 3 Other: -
Further Reference:
-
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Yesterday's Window
Synopsis:
the play stands on its own, however, it is also a companion piece to Nothing Forever and can be performed by the same actors. Yesterday's Window is a play about a woman and her imaginary daughter, and the outside world that intrudes on their loving relationship, full of wonder, joy, and, ultimately, sadness.
Notes:
-
1st Produced:
New York Theatre Workshop
1996
Organisations:
-
1st Published:
in TAKE TEN, Vintage, 1997 -
Music:
-
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Genre:
play Ten Min
Parts:
Male: 1 Female: 2 Other: -
Further Reference:
-
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