Support Material
Teiya Kasahara, applicant
the NAJC Endowment Fund:
Cultural development program
Jan 30, 2025
YUME DIGITAL DREAMS COLLABORATION
2022
In this digital collaboration by Tashme Productions, Teiya collaborates with Noriko K. Kobayashi (vocals, shigin, shamisen), and sings in Meiso Nippongo — Kuroda Bushi, Otsukisama, and Ayabsuhi, and uses their western influences of opera to intermingle with these traditional Japanese songs and poems. Additional music, sound effects, audio and video editing by Teiya Kasahara.
夜が一つの音になる
YORU ga hitotsu no oto ni naru
(when the night becomes one sound)
2019 ~
With only a few boxes of letters, poetry and religious sermons left by a middle-aged Japanese immigrant man, his mixed-race child is finally able to piece together a narrative of their displaced past, helping them come to terms with their gender, sexuality, and ethnicity through monologue, music, movement, operatic singing and taiko.
Supported by Nightwood Theatre’s Write From The Hip and Theatre Gargantua’s SideStream Cycle.
The butterfly project
Reimagining the original cultural inspiration of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, Kasahara elevates the Japanese folk songs quoted in the opera, while fore-fronting the Japanese language, and various traditional Japanese instruments.
Various photos of Kawashima Yoshiko.
A screenshot from a workshop presentation, March 2021.
19 videos for covid-19
In response to the onset of the COVID-19 global pandemic and shutdown of Toronto in March 2020, Kasahara sang (and recorded) 19 different operatic arias from their apartment which garnered them the nickname “the balcony soprano” (Toronto Star).
RIVER ISLAND 川島
A collaboration with Debi Wong (re:Naissance Opera), RIVER ISLAND 川島 is new opera that explores the many sides of the illusive and controversial Kawashima Yoshiko, a double-agent spy and gender-rebel before their time in a fictional 1930s Shanghai set in the historic Majestic Hotel. First phase of research and development will commence Fall 2021, generously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts.
collaborative opera toolkit
With support from the Banff Centre’s In-Situ Leighton Residency for 2021, Teiya Kasahara and Sarah Pelzer (Lucky Penny Opera) are researching and developing decolonized creation methodologies for operatic creation, rooted in devised creation practices from dance and theatre. More info coming soon.