Naomi Iizuka is the author of many plays including Polaroid Stories (recipient of the 1998 PEN Center USA West Award for Drama), Language of Angels, War of the Worlds (in collaboration with Anne Bogart and The SITI Company), Skin, and Tattoo Girl. Her work has been produced at Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Actor's Theatre of Louisville, Campo Santo + Intersection for the Arts in San Francisco, Dallas Theatre Center, Soho Rep, the Edinburgh Festival, and BAM. Iizuka is the recipient of a Gerbode Foundation Fellowship, an NEA/TCG Artist-in-Residence grant, a McKnight Fellowship, a Rockefeller Foundation grant, Princeton University's Hodder Fellowship, and a Jerome Playwriting Fellowship. She is a member of New Dramatists.
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Polaroid StoriesAn Adaptation of Ovid's Metamorphoses
NARCISSUS: it’s like it’s like
ECHO: it’s like it’s like
NARCISSUS: it’s like this, check it out: i meet this guy, right, and we go to his place and it’s phat it’s plush
ECHO: it’s phat it’s plush
NARCISSUS: it’s all glass and chrome
ECHO: glass and chrome
NARCISSUS: black leather, plush pile, big-screen tv with surround sound
ECHO: surround sound
NARCISSUS: mirrors everywhere, on the walls, in the hall, on the ceiling, looking at myself
ECHO: looking at myself
Polaroid Stories (iizpolar)Premiered in1997 -
Polaroid StoriesAn Adaptation of Ovid's Metamorphoses
ORPHEUS: when you sleep, i read your mind. it’s like we’re lying real close, skull to skull, and our brains meld, they become all siamese twin like, and i’m like sucking the thoughts right out of your head, swirling them around, seeing how they taste
EURYDICE: yeah, and how do they taste?
ORPHEUS: good
EURYDICE: yeah?
ORPHEUS: juicy
Polaroid Stories (iizpolar)Premiered in1997 -
Polaroid StoriesAn Adaptation of Ovid's Metamorphoses
NARCISSUS: when i was a little kid, the building where i lived at, it caught on fire, mmhm, and my mother, she held me out of the window, and she was all like: “fly away fly away fly away, little bird,” and then she let go – only thing was, i wasn’t no little bird, and i didn’t fly, i fell, and i don’t know what the bitch was smokin, cause if i didn’t die from the fire, i shoulda straight up died from the fall – ‘cept the thing being i landed on this big old mattress somebody threw out with the trash - fuckin fate, man, was on my ass – and then later this old wino found me, and took care of me for a while till his liver gave out, and then i was on my own, i was all alone, and that is the truth, i swear to god –
Polaroid Stories (iizpolar)Premiered in1997
“With an impressive sleight-of-hand-and-mind, artful minimalism and a visual beauty fully worthy of its many subjects, the contents of Naomi Iizuka’s Concerning Strange Devices From the Distant West somehow coalesce into an ever-shifting yet magically cohesive whole . . . ” —Chicago Sun-Times
" . . . thoughtful, humane, poetically phrased and staged with intricate, shimmering beauty . . . it spun a multi-textured web that became completely engrossing . . . As Iizuka weaves her magical blend of old-fashioned orientalism and modern realism, art-speak and academic jargon, pillow-book poetry and punk rhetoric, she probes the nature of truth and authenticity. Each facet of her 36 Views offers another perspective on the art and artifice of our lives." —The San Francisco Chronicle
"With Language of Angels, Iizuka has created a Rashomonlike meditation on the nature of memory, grief and passing time. To do this, she has taken some of the ghostly structure of the classical Japanese Noh play, recast it in a rural idiom and infused it with a humming, explosive energy—language used like a loaded weapon. She is an important and arresting talent." —Seattle Times
Selected Works
- Print Books
- Playscripts Acting Edition
- Print Books
- Powell's
- Barnes & Noble
- Alibris
- Abe Books