Reviews　　and comments from the audience

This is a beautiful piece. Using sparse costuming and lighting, a minimum of text,

simple movement, breathy Japanese music, and perfectly placed silences, The

Kimono Loosened tells a dark tale of prostitution, through the story of a young

girl who gets sent away to be a geisha. Over the course of the hour-long show,

Yuki Kawahisa -who also wrote the script- shifts seamllessly between the

characters of the girl, her mother, her father, and the old woman who runs the

geisha house. Unfolding the narrative slowly, layer by layer, Kawahisa has such a

powerful presence that she can change the entire mood of the piece by just slightly

shifting the expression on her face. And because the writing is so pared down, each

word has the impact of a freight train.

It’s simply a beautiful - if tragic- story, beautifully told.

Jennifer Van Evra -The Georgia Straight, Vancouver-

(Vancouver Fringe Festival 2000)

From the moment you step inside the venue and handed a tiny origami crane,

you enter the heart of writer and performer Yuki Kawahisa, who, unbelievably,

came to Vancouver as an ESL student afraid to communicate in English.

Her solo tour-de-force performance is intense, emotionally wrenching and

deeply rewarding. Tiny gestures carry the weight and pathos of an ancient and at

times impermeable culture, and her simple yet diverse characterization (notably

the geisha house obaa-chan and Sakura, the living doll) are exquisitely understated.

It’s impossible to look away, despite the dark themes, and there were moist eyes

all around me when the lights came up.

Heather Watson -Terminal City Weekly-

(The Vancouver Fringe Festival 2003)

The Kimono Loosened is written and performed by Yuki Kawahisa, a Vancouver

ESL student turned playwright. It’s the tale of a woman who’s sold to a geisha

house -essentially a Japanese brothel -by her father. There were many moments of

delicate beauty. Kawahisa tells her story with haiku-like economy. Influenced by

traditional Japanese theatre forms, she proved adept at capturing poignant or

dramatic moments with a slight incline of her head or a fleeting facial expression.

Adrian Chamberlain -Times Colonist, Victoria-

(The Uno Festival of Solo Performance 2001)

Yuki Kawahisa has accomplished something remarkable in her solo show,

The Kimono Loosened. It won’t surprise anyone who hears her heavily

Japanese-accented English to know that it is not her mother tongue. (She claims,

in the program notes, to have hated studying English grammar at her ESL school

in Vancouver.) Still, her skillful performance in a foreign language is eclipsed

only by the play itself, which is a subtle and unnerving puzzle that amounts to

genuine poetry.

Kimono tells the story of Tsukiko, a young Japanese girl who is sold to

a Geisha house by her father, to say more would spoil the surprises. Kawahisa,

with the cooperation of director/dramaturge Maureen Robinson, doesn’t

linger on the exoticism of the Geisha figure; there is remarkably little that’s

sentimental or romantic in this piece. Through the scenes of Tsukiko’s unhappy

childhood, which are interspersed with dreams, layers of narrative gently peel

away to reveal a lurid gothic thriller that recalls Edgar Allen Poe. Tsukiko’s doll,

Sakura, who according to the Japanese tradition has a living spirit, becomes

Tsukiko’s sole confidant and avenging angel. The proposition that Tsukiko’s doll

lives seems terrifyingly plausible by the end of the play.

I was impressed with Kawahisa’s determination to create stillness and

silence within her performance. Less confident performers lack the patience that

she has to generate the atmosphere of mystery and menace that pervades the play,

but she is saving the best for last. The intensity and detail of the characterizations

deepen significantly as the play progresses. Kawahisa performs all the roles

herself, dressed in sumptuous traditional Japanese garments and attended only

by masked silhouettes that represent her mother and father. Grandmother, the

Geisha house owner, memorably appears halfway through the piece to score some

unexpected laughs. Late in the play, Kawahisa becomes mesmerizing as the vividly

sensual older Tsukiko. The sexuality in the play is unabashedly unhealthy and

never divorced from the sense of subjugation that tattoos Tsukiko’s life, but it still

smuggles a lip-curling thrill.

The real success is the play itself. The language is disarmingly simple and

unmannered, but Kawahisa gingerly layers fiction, fable, and the mystique of a

faraway place in another era into an entrancing creation sweetly poisoned with the

taboo. If the final sequence of dreams and fantasies confuse the storytelling

somewhat, it doesn’t diminish the final moment, when we sense that the enchained

crimes of the mother, the daughter, the enchanted doll, the possessors and the

possessed, the punished and the punishers have all blended together until their

separate identities are lost and forgotten. The performance ends with a crisp final

tableau in which the doll, the mother’s mask, and Tsukiko’s living face are briefly,

but startlingly, indistinguishable.

Kyle Ancowitz -NY Theatre.com-

(The New York International Fringe Festival 2005)

Seldom is so sordid a tale so elegantly executed. Measured, precise and

accompanied by “Jonomai”, a traditional Noh score, The Kimono Loosened is a

treatment of a familiar occurrence in Japan’s history: a little girl is sold off to a

geisha house where, eventually, her virginity is sold to the highest bidder. “Like a

peach, you are ripe,” the owner of the house tells the trembling child. Stories about

geishas have been titillating Western readers and filmgoers for decades but

writer/performer Yuki Kawahisa adds some devastating twists to a familiar saga.

She also weaves her story around Tsukiyo’s doll, Sakura, who travels life’s road

with her. According to Japanese legend, dolls made by master’s hand have a spirit

and participate in their owner’s life.

Written and performed solo in English, The Kimono Loosened is a major

accomplishment by Kawahisa. It requires concentration to catch all her words,

however, and the music, while evocative, sometimes obscures the performer’s soft,

sweet voice. And while it’s unfair to criticize a work for what it is not, I hope

Kawahisa tackles something contemporary next time. The transition for Japanese

not so long ago when little girl could be sold to geisha house to the present, when

young woman, like the writer herself travel to Canada to study English. Who better

than Kawahisa to tell us some of these new stories?

Jo Ledingham -The Vancouver Courier-

(The Vancouver Fringe Festival 2003)

This is not your average coming-of-age story. Writer and performer Yuki Kawahisa,

who started studying English three years ago, tackles five characters and Japanese

society in this one-woman play. Considering the multiple layers of meaning in

The Kimono Loosened and the emotional depth of the material, the very

existence of this performance is a miracle.

Tukiyo is a young geisha. We learn the story of her past through the eyes of her

mother, her father, a living doll named Sakura and grandmother. Grandmother is the

owner of the geisha house. Kawahisa’s portrayal of Grandmother conversing with

Tukiyo in the geisha house is remarkable. Every last movement and mannerism is

meticulously developed.

In just over one hour, Kawahisa tells the story of a woman and a family’s

undoing, weaving in stories of abuse, innocence and magic. The stage design is spare

and beautiful; the traditional Japanese score matching Tukiyo’s inner conflicts.

The Only flaw in The Kimono Loosened, and the only factor that keeps it from

getting four stars, is the lost dialogue. Kawahisa speaks quickly, and with

accompanying music it’s often difficult to understand what she is saying. Even so,

this is brave and challenging work.

B

Todd Babiak -Edmonton Journal, Edmonton-

(The Edmonton Fringe Festival 2001)

★ ★★★　four stars out of five

The Kimono Loosened, written and performed by Yuki Kawahisa for last year’s

Vancouver Fringe and now touring Canada.This is an affecting and beautiful told

story of Tukiyo, a young Japanese girl sold to a geisha house by her father after he

and her mother have separated. She is desperately unhappy but finds comfort in her

doll, which was made by a master and consequently has a spirit of its own. It’s

emotional material that could teeter into sentimentality but Kawahisa’s open,

honest and simple performance makes it very moving.

Robert Crew -The Toronto Star, Toronto-

(The Toronto Fringe Festival 2001)

Love it or hate it, The Kimono Loosened is undeniably intriguing. A unique set of

props are used to great effect. Yuki Kawahisa has an intriguing stage presence, and

the dark script, about the life of a Geisha girl, takes some interesting turns.

Adam Houston -SEE Magazine, Edmonton-

(The Edmonton Fringe Festival 2001)

Yuki Kawahisa came to Canada from Japan in 1998 as an ESL student and has since

written three plays in English, quite an accomplishment. The third of these, The

Kimono Loosened, is an hour-long solo show about an innocent young Japanese

girl who is betrayed by her mother, sold by her father to be a geisha, and exploited by

the owner of the geisha house. It’s not for the faint-hearted: this is a tragic tale

culminating in a twisted ending of bitterness, revenge and, finally, freedom.

It’s clear that Kawahisa has poured her heart into this work. She has a strong

presence and has been well directed by Maureen Robinson. She particularly shines

when she shifts between portrayals of the grandmother (the geisha house owner) and

Tukiyo, the young geisha.

The set is simple, but effective. The parents are represented by two kimono hung

to either side of the stage, white masks representing their faces. A chair center stage

becomes the resting place of the young girl’s “living doll”, a doll possessed with a

spirit and special powers. It is her doll that Kawahisa confides in as her situation

worsens.

Although the work could have become overwhelming in its sadness, Kawahisa

offers brief interludes of dance movement and music that provide the audience with a

moment to draw a collective breath and steel themselves for the next scene. This

device, plus almost constant back ground music (unfortunately uncredited) move this

work into the realm of physical theatre.

Andrea Rowe -The Ottawa Citizen, Ottawa-

(The Ottawa Fringe Festival 2001)

Despite it’s “come one, come all” openness and international reputation, our Fringe

fest tend to draw only a smattering of performances that actually approach from the

other side of any sort of cultural barrier. Yuki Kawahisa’s The Kimono Loosened is

on of those rarities. It’s a challenging piece, but worthwhile if you can accept it as a

glimpse of unique type of theatre and respect its tightly focused one-woman

performance. With elegant but simple props, including representations of a mother

and father figure wearing traditional Japanese theatre masks, Kawahisa tells the story

of young Tukiyo, a girl sent to become a geisha. Over the course of her tale, Tukiyo

interacts with the kindly geisha house madam, as well as her parents and her “talking”

doll, Sakura. Eventually we learn of her lost innocence and its devastating effect.

Fans or scholars of Japanese culture, or those simply interested in a truly unique

and fearless bit of theatre, should definitely give The Kimono Loosened a look.

As with any challenge, it has its own reward.

Steve Tilley -The Edmonton Sun, Edmonton-

(The Edmonton Fringe Festival 2001)

- Captivating world. Recommend it. Wonderful acting.

- Excellent. Good script, perfect acting.

- Very good! Must see!

- If you see this, you’ll see something very interesting and top rate acting.

-Audience member of The Calgary Fringe Festival -