COMING IN FEBRUARY 2025:

“Both Eyes Open”
An Opera in one act
By Max Giteck Duykers and Philip Kan Gotanda

Preview - Friday February 14th, 2025
Premiere - Saturday February 15th and 16th, 2025
Zellerbach Playhouse
2413 Bancroft Way, Berkeley, CA 94704

TICKETS HERE https://secure-tickets.berkeley.edu/26079/26080

With: Suchan Kim, Zen Wu 吳肇文, and John Kun Park
Featuring Eco Ensemble under the direction of David Milnes,
Percussionist Joel Davel, and
The U.C. Berkeley University Chorus, under the direction of Wei Cheng

Director: Melissa Weaver
Designers: Kwame Braun, Matthew E. Jones, IuHui Chua, Lydia Tanji

Premiered in 2022 at the Presidio Theater in San Francisco and in 2023 at the Flea Theater in New York, Both Eyes Open is continuing its development in preparation for performances at U.C, Berkeley's Zellerbach Playhouse in February, 2025, under conductor David Milnes, and featuring a full chorus under direction of Wei Cheng. Support comes from the UC Berkeley Japanese American Studies Advisory Committee, a Mellon Project Grant from the Division of Arts & Humanities Dean's Office, Cal Performances, UC Berkeley Department of Music, UC Berkeley Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies, Center for Japanese Studies, Townsend Center for the Humanities, the California Civil Liberties Program, New Performance Traditions, the Japanese American Confinement Sites Consortium, and through the generous support of Jerome and Thao Dodson.

Both Eyes Open is an experimental opera by Brooklyn-based composer Max Giteck Duykers and Bay Area playwright Philip Kan Gotanda. This work explores the scarring that Japanese-Americans experienced during World War II and suggests paths toward healing.

Both Eyes Open tells a haunting love story and tale of perseverance about a Japanese American farmer, Jinzo Matsumoto, and his wife, Catherine, who are incarcerated in an American concentration camp during the hysteria of World War II. Before leaving their farm, they bury a “Daruma Doll” on their land. According to tradition, these papier-mâché idols are given to people when they embark on a challenging endeavor or make a serious promise. At that time, only one eye is painted on the doll’s face to symbolize the person’s initial commitment to the challenge. If success comes, then the doll receives its second eye and is burned ceremonially to release its spirit.

The story’s characters endure and reclaim a vibrant humanity in the face of betrayal and sacrifice. This opera-theater hybrid features the latest stagecraft side-by-side with elements of ancient traditions, in a poetic melding of historical atrocity and the whimsical lore of the Daruma Doll. The music ranges from soaring lyricism to taiko drumming, big band, and undulating electronic samples. Vivid scenic projections enhance this surreal, psychological journey of awakening.

Combining contemporary music and singing, interactive audio and video, and narrative-based movement, Both Eyes Open revisits a pivotal moment in U.S. history and ethnic tensions that still resonate today.

Librettist’s note:

Both Eyes Open is an operatic telling of the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. Rather than a historical recounting, Both Eyes Open gives an impressionistic narrative centering on the psychological trauma of the American concentration camps.

America is a fertile land. It grows things. Potatoes and Daikon, Exclusion Acts and Executive Orders. Both Eyes Open frames the current rise in Anti-Asian hatred as coming from the same source that grew the incarceration of Japanese Americans in 1942.

Both Eyes Open is a collaborative vision. Max Giteck Duykers has composed this remarkable score. Missy Weaver has given all to steward the project from the beginning. We mash up lyrical with raucous, ambitious aesthetic with vaudevillian low brow, social justice with the metaphysical. We sincerely hope you enjoy the ride.

On the history of the collaboration:

In 2008 I attended a performance by the renown opera tenor John Duykers in a small South of Market space in SF. Sitting some 10 feet away I was simply blown away by the power and magnificence of John’s voice. As soon as the performance ended, I approached John and asked if he would be willing to work together. John agreed and we began. Initial story lines had to do with a time traveler, then an apricot farmer, eventually landing on a subject I had been investigating, the psychological trauma of Japanese Americans from their incarceration during World War II. John is not Japanese American so we discussed how he might be in the story. John had been the original inspiration for the project’s journey. We found the Daruma Doll, a memento exchanged as a good luck offering, the right vehicle for John’s role. It helps that upon further research we found that the Daruma is based on the Zen monk Bodhidharma, who was rumored in some texts as coming from the West and having blue eyes.
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-Philip Kan Gotanda