Falling Into the Sky

Scenic & Projection Design (FP/RP)
Director-W. Kamau Bell
Lighting Jose Lopez
East West Players

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Bobby Nakamoto's one-man play, Voice Lessons, directed by W. Kamau Bell, is an autobiographical exploration of his "road less traveled"--the road of claiming music--after more than a decade in a "respectable" profession as a school psychologist--as his true passion and life's calling. Through story-based theatre and live musical performance, Nakamoto renders his struggle to confront personal, familial and cultural voices in order to finally hear his own. A saxophonist for 25 years, Nakamoto's musicianship has been influenced and informed by jazz, R&B, Latin and world music genres. While Bobby Nakamoto's Voice Lessons explores a road less traveled, Tani Nakamoto's newest dance theatre work, Psalms for Endangered Species, directed by Jessica Wolf, excavates roads already set forth in Nikkei (Japanese American) history, digging for transformation beneath the surface of the everyday, and giving form to stories not yet commonly shared in the Nikkei diaspora. Tani Nakamoto is a native of the Crenshaw community, and her movement-based work has been described as "transparent" and "mature" by postmodern dance pioneer Anna Halprin. Falling Into the Sky closes with a collaborative saxophone-and-dance homage to the beauty, courage and depth of Nikkei experience across generations.