Haruki Murakami’s Sleep
Opening Night: November 29, 2017
Closing: December 2, 2017
Theater: BAM Fisher
“This is my 17th straight day without sleep.” A Japanese housewife’s mundane existence of chores and grocery shopping explodes when a haunting dream leads her to cast sleep aside, releasing her into a world of danger and the thrill of the unknown. Based on the 1994 short story by the beloved Japanese author Haruki Murakami (The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle), this hypnotic physical theater piece by Brooklyn-based, Obie Award-winning company Ripe Time follows one woman beyond the bounds of society. Led by a powerhouse female creative team—including director Rachel Dickstein and playwright Naomi Iizuka—and featuring an original score performed live by NewBorn Trio, this playful and eerie journey takes audiences through a wakeful realm where bodies float, ghosts lurk, and daylight rules no longer apply.
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November 30, 2017
What do you do when you can’t sleep? Do you take deep breaths? Do you take pink capsules? Do you tally worries, count sheep, or do you decide to give up and get up and stay there?
That’s the choice made by the woman at the center of “Sleep,” a gorgeous and surreal adaptation of Haruki Murakami’s short story, directed and devised by Rachel Dickstein and Ripe Time at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
An unnamed woman (Jiehae Park) wakes from a nightmare and finds that she can no longer sleep.
When we meet her, she says, “This is my 17th day without sleep. I don’t sleep. I can’t sleep.” (I have two very young children, which is to say, “Girl, I feel you.”)
To pass the darkened hours, the woman rediscovers the novels she loved as a teenager, chiefly “Anna Karenina.” Soon Anna and Vronsky and a few ghostlier figures are languishing in the corners of the tidy condo she shares with her dentist husband and school-age son.
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