The Love Suicides at Amijima

I should be grading my papers from EN 101A, and in class we are moving on beyond drama to...film, but I thought that I would post a quick blog entry on the play that we have just read, The Love Suicides at Amijima.  The picture above is from a 1997 English-language version performed at NYC's LaMama Theater.  For more information about this production, see this link below:

http://www.theatrejapan.com/amijima.html

A professor at Washburn University in Kansas has posted background on the play. 

http://www.washburn.edu/reference/bridge24/Chickamatsu.html

For more information about bunraku (the genre that this play originally belonged to):

http://www.japan-zone.com/culture/bunraku.shtml

http://www.sagecraft.com/puppetry/definitions/Bunraku.hist.html

http://www.puppetcentre.org.uk/animationsonline/aotwentyone/ao21_whatsinaname.html

Here are video clips of bunraku although not of Love Suicides:

http://www2.ntj.jac.go.jp/unesco/bunraku/en/video.html

In 1969, a film version of Love Suicides (Double Suicide) appeared:

http://www.gotterdammerung.org/film/shinoda-masahiro/double-suicide.html