Today I went to Brooklyn to visit our sponsoring partners, J-Collabo.
Mr. Hitoshi Sagaseki and Ms. Sachi Shimoda had some phenomenal ideas.
In a word, we are going create a home for Rakugo in Brooklyn at the same time as opening the show off-Broadway in Manhattan!
Brooklyn is a hotbed for arts with over 700 arts organization and the power of a young population, apparently median 2-years below the national median. It is Brooklyn is one of the city of New York’s 5 buroughs, the other’s being Manhattan, The Bronx, Queens and Staten Island. To put Brooklyn in perspective as to size, more than a quarter of the population of the City of New York lives in Brooklyn and at 2.6 million has a million more residents than Manhattan.
J-Collabo is an organization dedicated to bringing Japanese culture to New York, to the United States, and more broadly, indeed to the world. But a secondary part of their activities are fostering exchange between their home burough of Brooklyn and Japan.
To that end if you go to J-Collabo’s store you have various products from Japan mixed in with products that Brooklyn makers have created - and the sense of presentation an packaging and overall artistic sense makes them a really great fit, interestingly.
One of the main aims of mounting Rakugo off-Broadway is to get noticed by theatres around the world, to be invited to perform in and tour to many theatres in many cities in many countries. To be going in to the off-Broadway run with a home for Rakugo ready to go in Brooklyn is a huge step, and I have to thank Sagaseki-san and Shimoda-san for this unique opportunity.
Not only am I looking forward to performing Rakugo in Brooklyn on the J-Collabo site, but we also discussed many opportunities for education - Rakugo workshops, Rakugo shows for children, using Rakugo to present a wide variety of Japanese arts and culture, especially culinary culture, and really creating a Rakugo community in Brooklyn.
And who knows? Maybe the first apprentice to Katsura Sunshine will be a young person who comes to study Rakugo with J-Collabo at the home of Rakugo in Brooklyn.
All we need is to come up with a name for our venue.
Any ideas?
If you would like to support Rakugo in New York, please consider joining Team Sunshine - J-Collabo has created the Sunshine Fund 501(c)3!
Also, be sure to sign up for the Sunshine List below, and be the first to know everything! Particularly opening dates, special events, discount tickets, and of course, the details of our debut in Brooklyn!