Soul of The City  follows a storyteller who has no more stories to tell. Her husband is sick, her boy has moved away, and nobody is buying the stories she’s trying to tell. Pursued by demons and haunted by ghosts, the storyteller embarks on a journey to find the soul of San Francisco. This multimedia music drama is a ritual performance. Rooted in traditional Japanese theater and music and infused with contemporary spoken word and Asian American Jazz, Soul of The City reveals the divine in us all. 

The audience will arrive dressed in regalia (ethnic, gender or personal) and will gather in the garden to put prayers, photographs or talisman on the Soul of The City  sacred tree.  A Buddhist priest will bless us with a purification ceremony and  willing participants will be given temple bells to call the ancestors. We will then go inside the theater. The audience will witness a ritual performance of jazz, storytelling, and poetry that is accompanied by photographs and images of Brenda’s family in San Francisco since the 1800’s.  At the conclusion of the performance we will return to the garden for refreshments, renewed, recharged and inspired  to carry on.

Soul of The City Creative Team

Written by Brenda Wong Aoki. Directed by David Furumoto with musical direction by Masaru Koga. Original music by Mark Izu, Masaru Koga, and Derek Nakamoto. Multimedia by Andi Wong and Olivia Ting. Costumes by Lydia Tanji. Performers include Brenda Wong Aoki, Caroline Cabading, Masaru Koga, devorah major, Hikage, Jimi Nakagawa, and Kenneth Nash.