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Izumi Ashizawa has been an artistic director of Izumi Ashizawa Performance since 2002.
Her original plays have been performed in various countries. The second part of her Neo-Noh trilogy, The Blue Rocks , was presented at the International Arts and Ideas Edge Festival in New Haven, CT (2003), New York International Fringe Festival, NY(2004), Man In Fest Festival in Romania(2005), Fajr Theatre Festival in Tehran, Iran(2006), Sibiu International Theatre Festival, Romania(2006 and 2009), Arion Tokyo Summer Music Festival, Tokyo, Japan(2006), and Cay Fest in the Grand Cayman, the Cayman Islands (2009) .
The intensive documentary of the Tokyo production has been broadcasted through the National Public TV of Japan(NHK).
The first part of the trilogy, Medusa, has been performed in 2002 and has won the Puffin Foundation Award and Gretchen Johnson Award. Ashizawa was awarded a prestigious UNESCO-Aschberg award and has completed the art-residency program at Institut International de la Marionnette in France in 2007.
During her residency, she wrote a play, “Zahak,” which based on the Persian myth. Immediately after her residency in France, Ashizawa was commissioned to direct this play in Iran. She created the “Zahak” performance with ten Iranian actors, intertwining her exquisite movement techniques fused with marionette and mask manipulations and original Persian live music.
It was performed in 2007 and received enthusiastic reviews. Zahak won a special award for aesthetic excellence. Ashizawa's other Iranian production, "Minotaur" was also awarded the Best Performance Award and Tehran Municipality Arts and Culture Organisation Award. In 2008, she received an Australian Government Grant for the Arts and Culture Arts Queensland to create an original puppet performance piece.
Ashizawa's Gilgamesh: part I was premiered in Florida in 2007. The complete version of Gilgamesh: part I and II were produced in Florida and Maryland. Gilgamesh was also performed in Chicago, New Haven, and Boulder in the U.S., and in Slovenia and Austria. Ashizawa's "Gilgamesh" won the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival Faculty Achievement Awards Excellence in Directing and Excellence in Technology for her scenic design.
“There is a spell cast by Noh drama that first slows then condenses time, so that as the plot progresses (usually a romance), the heart opens to it like a lotus or, in the case of the Fringe production of The Blue Rocks, like an American rose. Written, directed, designed, masked, and costumed by Izumi Ashizawa, this stylized story of seduction and abandonment jumbles the senses as in a dream, intensified by the bewitching and original score by Simos Papanas, as mixed by Sabrina McGuigan and finished by Matthew Daline (think John Cage in Japan).”
—-Backstage Magazine—-
mailto:izumedusa@gmail.com
http://izumiashizawa.tripod.com/index.html
Here are few videos reflect some of their work.