COMING IN JANUARY 2023:

The Paul Dresher Ensemble, OPERA America’s New Works Forum, Ensemble Ipse, and First Look Sonoma present:

“Both Eyes Open”, NY Premiere
A Chamber Opera
By Max Giteck Duykers and Philip Kan Gotanda

Friday January 13th, 2023
The Flea Theater
20 Thomas St, New York, NY 10007

TICKETS HERE

With: Suchan Kim, Zen Wu, and John Duykers

Featuring Ensemble Ipse, with conductor Ben Makino and Joel Davel, Marimba Lumina
Director, Melissa Weaver
Designers Kwame Braun, Matthew E. Jones, Maria Christoff

Both Eyes Open is an experimental chamber opera by Brooklyn-based composer Max Giteck Duykers and Bay Area playwright Philip Kan Gotanda. This work explores the scarring that Japanese-Americans experienced during World War II and suggests paths toward healing.

Both Eyes Open tells a haunting love story and tale of perseverance about a Japanese American farmer, Jinzo Matsumoto, and his wife, Catherine, who are incarcerated in an American concentration camp during the hysteria of World War II. Before leaving their farm, they bury a “Daruma Doll” on their land. According to tradition, these papier-mâché idols are given to people when they embark on a challenging endeavor or make a serious promise. At that time, only one eye is painted on the doll’s face to symbolize the person’s initial commitment to the challenge. If success comes, then the doll receives its second eye and is burned ceremonially to release its spirit.

The story’s characters endure and reclaim a vibrant humanity in the face of betrayal and sacrifice. This opera-theater hybrid features the latest stagecraft side-by-side with elements of ancient traditions, in a poetic melding of historical atrocity and the whimsical lore of the Daruma Doll. The music ranges from soaring lyricism to taiko drumming, big band, and undulating electronic samples. Vivid scenic projections enhance this surreal, psychological journey of awakening.

Combining contemporary music and singing, interactive audio and video, and narrative-based movement, Both Eyes Open revisits a pivotal moment in U.S. history and ethnic tensions that still resonate today.

Librettist’s note:

Both Eyes Open is an operatic telling of the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. Rather than a historical recounting, Both Eyes Open gives an impressionistic narrative centering on the psychological trauma of the American concentration camps.

America is a fertile land. It grows things. Potatoes and Daikon, Exclusion Acts and Executive Orders. Both Eyes Open frames the current rise in Anti-Asian hatred as coming from the same source that grew the incarceration of Japanese Americans in 1942.

Both Eyes Open is a collaborative vision. Max Giteck Duykers has composed this remarkable score. Missy Weaver has given all to steward the project from the beginning. We mash up lyrical with raucous, ambitious aesthetic with vaudevillian low brow, social justice with the metaphysical. We sincerely hope you enjoy the ride.

On the history of the collaboration:

In 2008 I attended a performance by the renown opera tenor John Duykers in a small South of Market space in SF. Sitting some 10 feet away I was simply blown away by the power and magnificence of John’s voice. As soon as the performance ended, I approached John and asked if he would be willing to work together. John agreed and we began. Initial story lines had to do with a time traveler, then an apricot farmer, eventually landing on a subject I had been investigating, the psychological trauma of Japanese Americans from their incarceration during World War II. John is not Japanese American so we discussed how he might be in the story. John had been the original inspiration for the project’s journey. We found the Daruma Doll, a memento exchanged as a good luck offering, the right vehicle for John’s role. It helps that upon further research we found that the Daruma is based on the Zen monk Bodhidharma, who was rumored in some texts as coming from the West and having blue eyes.
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-Philip Kan Gotanda