AFTER THE QUAKE

October 7 - November 6, 2011

In the aftermath of a terrible earthquake, a writer fueled by heartbreak heals a broken little girl, while a menacing frog saves Tokyo from an enormous worm. Adapted from the short stories of Haruki Murakami, Galati’s play brings to life Murakami’s “hallucinatory world where the real and surreal merge and overlap, where dreams and real-life nightmares are impossible to tell apart”. (New York Times)

‎“It’s strong, stirring stuff—a modern fable with an oblique moral. It enchants us like a dream and kicks like a nightmare.”

Washington City Paper

FEATURING

Daniel Corey Maboud Ebrahimzadeh Megan Graves Jennifer Knight Dylan Myers

Designers

Set Debra Kim Sivigny
Costumes Frank Labovitz
Lighting Stephanie P. Freed
Sound Elisheba Ittoop

STAFF

Stage Manager Cecilia Cackley
ASM Jamel Daugherty
Assistant Director Seamus Sullivan
Asst Set Design Ryan Lanhan
Asst. Lighting Design Maria Benson
Master Electrician Tom Klonowski

PRODUCERS

Randy Baker
Jenny McConnell Frederick

MEDIA

PRESS

"Junpei’s magical-realist story—about a shy banker who must aid a giant magical-realist frog in combat against a giant magical-realist worm—provides the evening’s play-within-a-play. Galati’s script preserves luxurious passages of Murakami’s (translated) prose, a sensual pleasure as performed by each member of the company. The design team, meanwhile, has created a visual and aural environment to match the haunted elegance of the words: Newspaper pages and homemade missing-persons flyers paper the theater space’s walls, while bits of detritus—plush toys, plastic bottles, 45-RPM records—hang from the ceiling. Ingeniously, when an actor needs a prop, it’s usually hanging just overhead.
Dylan Myers displays an expansive physicality as the frog who summons the banker, Katagiri, on his heroic mission. (If you’ve ever wondered what those thin-soled rubber athletic shoes with individual toes are for, the answer is: amphibian wear.) Maboud Ebrahimzadeh is double-cast as Katagiri and the pal who steals away Junpei’s love. You pity his characters differently. The same prop—a black-lace curtain, basically—convincingly evokes the worm the frog must fight and later, a terrifying hallucination of an insect invasion of Katagiri’s wounded body. It’s strong, stirring stuff—a modern fable with an oblique moral. It enchants us like a dream and kicks like a nightmare."

Washington City Paper

"It would be too glib to say this is a story of healing. It is something better: a story about ordinary people living their lives, through difficulties. Director Randy Baker’s instincts with Frank Galati’s good adaptation are superb; all of his actors give subtle and precise renderings of their characters, full of great knowingness and understanding… In short, this play has been Rorschachisized, which is to say delivered with such speed, punch and precision that it is impossible not to accept the most outlandish developments."

DC Theatre Scene

"Baker’s production does well to capture the loneliness at the heart of the parallel plots, thanks in part to tender performances by Daniel J. Corey and Maboud Ebrahimzadeh. Rorschach is exemplary at the edgy-little-theater business; the material is dark and daring, and the acting is generally sure… The shoestring design is smart, driven by Elisheba Ittoop’s understated, moody sound and Stephanie P. Freed’s warm, shadowy lights."

The Washington POst