One of the most prestigious events on the Canadian theatre calendar has arrived. The highly anticipated Enbridge playRites Festival of New Canadian Plays takes place from February 6th to March 9th.
Train, running from February 12th to 24th is unique among this year’s entrants as its writer, Vancouver’s Maiko Bae Yamamoto, is also its star, alongside her father Minoru Kofu Yamamoto.
“I think playRites is one of the elite experiences of Canadian theatre. When the brochures came out for playRites I got calls and emails from people saying they were so glad that I am at the festival. I can only say it is an absolute honor to be invited to be presented at the festival,” Yamamoto told GayCalgary and Edmonton Magazine while trying to navigate our plus-15 system. “I am really excited about playing for a Calgary audience. We were here last year at the High Performance Rodeo with a vastly different show but it is great to be part of this festival. I really can’t wait to get on stage and play for the Calgary audience, for sure.”
The poor Vancouverite was in the midst of rehearsals when the recent brutal cold snap hit the city, thus the reason she was attempting to navigate the plus-15.
“It is too cold here!! I tried to get to the theatre today in the plus 15 but we had to walk outside for a portion of it and all of the liquids on my body froze. I was like a snowman when I got here. I am not used to this at all. It is definitely a shock to the system! I am a little bit stuffy right now because of it. My Dad has a traditional flute that he plays in the show and it has to warm up for awhile. It definitely puts a little bit of a pause at the beginning of the day and then we get warmed up and going.”
Train tells the story of three characters: a sharply dressed man waiting in a crowded Tokyo train station for the love of his life to arrive. At the same station, a woman walks dangerously close along the edge, up and down the platform. These two are closely observed by the noodle-stand girl, who decides to take their fates into her own hands. In a place where lives and possibilities intersect, three captivating characters learn about the connections of love and loss.
“I would describe it as a ghost story. ...Sometimes you turn a corner and see something and feel like ‘that would have been my life if I had made another choice.’ It is about people as ghosts, people in our lives that move on and still linger, and about the possibilities of what our lives would have been like had we made a different decision. It is really the story of these three people who happen to be in this Train Station in Tokyo, and this Noodle Girl’s desire to tamper with the lives of the two people she meets there. It is a very surreal story and certainly flips in and out of realism and has many different ways of telling the narrative.”
The story is based on real events that happened in Maiko’s father’s life. He did once wait for a woman at a train. Ironically, if he had met that woman, he may have not met Maiko’s mother and the writer herself may not exist.
“It is a story that is loosely inspired on stories from my family. It is based on a true incident, but through fictionalizing it, it has been expanded and pushed and pulled.”
Yamamoto’s journey to playRites began two years ago when she attended the festival and met assistant dramaturge Vicki Stroich, who invited her to the playRites colony in Banff and she began developing the show. The advantage to being both actor and writer is the ability to continue to adapt and change her project.
“What it does is offer me a hell of a lot of control, which has been very interesting. I try to really open up and give over to other people that are in the room. It is still not done - we are still working on it right now. We work very collaboratively and everyone is in the room piping in, so things shift on a day-to-day basis. It is not really a play that is a script you would follow. There are a lot of different elements besides text that helps to tell the story,” she said.
“For any creator that is making a play, whether they be a playwright or working through a collaborative process, it is always an immensely rewarding thing to see it come to fruition. There is also something extremely satisfying about sharing this experience with my Father, who is in the play with me. I really feel this is the first step for this, and we will continue to work on and shape and adapt this for future productions.”
The inclusion of Minoru Kofu Yamamoto, a retired mechanic, also makes the story behind Train unique.
“After my Dad retired a few years ago he expressed an interest in acting. He did a play in Vancouver and a couple of readings here and there. My family growing up was always really musical and performance was part of our vocabulary somehow. He expressed that he would like to start doing that. It made me be able to realize the dream of performing with him on stage, which has been really great. It is interesting being in this position because when growing up, your parents … are kind of the masters. Now we are in a position where he is looking at me and I am supposed to be the master. …There hasn’t been any tension, he just looks at me and says he hopes he can remember everything and I tell him I know he can.”
For a complete listing and schedule of all of this years Enbridge playRites Festival of New Canadian Plays visit www.atplive.com.
