Vera Chok in “Tonseisha” at Studio, Central Saint Martins in London.
TONSEISHA: The Man Who Abandoned The World
by Erik Patterson
Cast: 1 female, 5 male
Genre: Drama
Keywords: Fathers, Richard Brautigan, beat poets, suicide, haiku
Character Breakdown:
Akiko: mid-twenties, Japanese.
Richard Brautigan: 49, American, writer.
Man/Michael: 48, American.
Robert: 40s, American, poet/novelist.
Tom: 40s, American, journalist.
Man: 40s, American.
Synopsis:
A young Japanese woman is haunted by the loss of two men: her father, whom she barely knew, and cult novelist Richard Brautigan, whom she's never met. Akiko plays out her father/Richard Brautigan fantasies with a new man nearly every night. Each one of her relationships begins in a bar and ends in a bedroom, and she's never satisfied. She's so lost...can she ever be found?
Tonseisha: The Man Who Abandoned the World. A play written mostly in haiku verse.
Reviews
"Erik Patterson's Tonseisha is the highlight of the triple bill, an odd story of how a Japanese woman’s obsession with the writer Richard Brautigan both enriches and destroys her life. Patterson’s writing is original, POETIC AND FUNNY…”
-- LA Weekly, Terry Morgan
"A STRONG theatrical heartbeat."
-- Backstage West, Brad Schreiber