Both Eyes Open, Japanese American incarceration, WWII, opera
Arts & Entertainment, Events

JA Incarceration Opera BOTH EYES OPEN to Have New York Premiere

Both Eyes Open

Friday, January 13 from 8:00 p.m. until 10:00 p.m.

The Flea Theater – 20 Thomas Street (between Broadway and Trimble Place)

Admission: $33.46

The Paul Dresher Ensemble, OPERA America’s New Works Forum, Ensemble Ipse, and First Look Sonoma present the New York premiere of Both Eyes Open, a chamber opera by Max Giteck Duykers and Philip Kan Gotanda.

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. It mashes up lyrical with raucous, ambitious aesthetic with vaudevillian lowbrow, social justice with the metaphysical.

Both Eyes Open, Japanese American incarceration, WWII, opera
Both Eyes Open. Photo ©Terry Lorant Photography

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, Japanese American incarceration, WWII, opera
Kalean Ung (left) and Suchan Kim of Both Eyes Open. Photo ©Terry Lorant Photography

About the Creators

Both Eyes Open‘s score is by Brooklyn-based composer Max Giteck Duykers with the libretto by Japanese American playwright Philip Kan Gotanda. For more information, please visit Both Eyes Open’s website. To purchase tickets, please visit Eventbrite.