FILM
Blank Canvas
A film by Sango Tajima & Marc Arricale
Made in association with Goldsmiths, University of London & Oklahoma City University
An American man in denial over his own grief and a Japanese tattoo artist hiding behind her own skin meet at a Butoh dance class in London and set out on a journey of self-discovery and healing in Blank Canvas.
A film by Sango Tajima & Marc Arricale
Made in association with Goldsmiths, University of London & Oklahoma City University
An American man in denial over his own grief and a Japanese tattoo artist hiding behind her own skin meet at a Butoh dance class in London and set out on a journey of self-discovery and healing in Blank Canvas.
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umami
A video play by Sango Tajima Produced by Ferocious Lotus Five recipes that will leave you both hungry and nourished. A Mother in Japan and a Daughter in San Francisco meet every week on Zoom to cook their family recipes and eat them together. Their relationship evolves with food as the point of connection. Food as a representation of love, culture, history, and memory. Food as a reminder of where you are from. |
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Happy Birthday, You Revolution
A film by Sango Tajima 3 Birthdays. A pandemic. A household in quarantine. A series of uprisings. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, YOU REVOLUTION is a sonic video-book documenting the sights & sounds of Oakland, California from March-September 2020. A birthday gift honoring Black & Brown life and the ways we fight for it. |
PLAYWRITING
skinship (work in progress)
A solo show directed by Susannah Martin
“skinship”, an original solo show written and performed by Sango Tajima, addresses the profound fears and anxieties that often hinder us from forming genuine connections and intimate relationships. The character of Sango struggles with a deep fear of people, which debilitates her ability to form new relationships and deepen her connections with loved ones. At the behest of her therapist/stage manager, Shosh, she uses the show as an Exposure Therapy session to literally face her fear (the audience). Sango delves into her family history to look at the messages and practices that were imparted to her by her parents and ancestors, as they navigated life in a post-war Japan and war-torn Manchuria. Weaving the "session" with personal stories, history, facts and statistics, Japanese pop culture, original punk songs, and rituals with the audience, Sango discovers the joys of human connection and examines the intergenerational impact of trauma and cultural influences that have shaped her life.
A solo show directed by Susannah Martin
“skinship”, an original solo show written and performed by Sango Tajima, addresses the profound fears and anxieties that often hinder us from forming genuine connections and intimate relationships. The character of Sango struggles with a deep fear of people, which debilitates her ability to form new relationships and deepen her connections with loved ones. At the behest of her therapist/stage manager, Shosh, she uses the show as an Exposure Therapy session to literally face her fear (the audience). Sango delves into her family history to look at the messages and practices that were imparted to her by her parents and ancestors, as they navigated life in a post-war Japan and war-torn Manchuria. Weaving the "session" with personal stories, history, facts and statistics, Japanese pop culture, original punk songs, and rituals with the audience, Sango discovers the joys of human connection and examines the intergenerational impact of trauma and cultural influences that have shaped her life.
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EVOLUTION: The Floater
A short play co-produced by Ferocious Lotus & TheatreFirst Suki has WebMD'd herself back to Planned Parenthood again. Her boss just keeps her around for burrata salads and cultural consulting. And sometimes she feels...invisible. Nothing some good friends and a yoni steam can't cure! |
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ROOTED: Art & Betty
A short play produced by Ferocious Lotus Chicago, 1955. A warm summer Friday night. In a lively social club, teenagers Art and Betty connect over shared memories and music. They exchange stories about their different upbringings: Art’s nostalgic tales of ice cream and kerosene stoves in Crystal City, and Betty’s somber recollections of mess halls and horse meat in her internment camp. Through their conversation, they discover common ground in their past struggles and find solace in each other’s company. A story of a shared resilience and a bittersweet sense of community amidst adversity. Inspired by the life and love of Art & Betty Shibayama. |
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OVERNIGHT: Talk to Me
A short play produced by Ragged Wing Ensemble Overnight, a massive tower appears in downtown Oakland, casting a long shadow over the city and its inhabitants. In this new reality, a stuttering graffiti artist named Turtle and an immigrant janitor named Liang find their lives intertwined. As Turtle sees the tower as the perfect blank canvas for his art, Liang faces the challenge of keeping it pristine to save her job. Together, they struggle to find common ground and a shared language in a city transformed by the mysterious tower. |
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Through the Wall
A play by Anthony Clarvoe, Nick Hadikwa Mwaluko, Sango Tajima, and Davern Wright Produced by Ragged Wing Ensemble Four roommates share an eerie Victorian house in Oakland with an enigmatic old landlady residing upstairs. As the story unfolds, it becomes clear that the house itself is a living entity, feeding on the tales and inherited compulsions of its tenants. An exploration of the unseen and the unsettling, where familial legacies intertwine with spectral mysteries in a chilling narrative that reveals how the past haunts the present. |
ADVOCACY & ACTIVISM
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THE BETTI ONO FOUNDATION
Since 2021, Sango has been working with the Betti Ono Foundation, a Black woman and survivor-led 501c3 and social enterprise rooted in Oakland, California, with a mission to build power through culture. Founded in 2010, Betti Ono is a community-based cultural hub for racial justice, alliance building, cultural strategy, and community engagement to build solutions to society’s most pressing civic issues. The work Sango supported on the #NotOneMoreGirl initiative has been featured in Americans for the Arts Magazine. |
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THE BONFIRE MAKERS
The Bonfire Makers are a political performance collective who use theatre, like a bonfire, to draw diverse audiences around a shared experience. By building evocative performances gathered from community stories and ensemble collaboration, we illuminate diverse experiences, spark dialogue, and ignite change. We recognize that we live under systems that entrench inequalities, a reality deeply felt in the Bay Area, and our work springs from, speaks to, and seeks to heal these injustices. We embrace theater as a people’s tool for resistance, re-imagining, and transformation. |
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OPEN YOUR LOBBY
In 2020, Sango led the #OpenYourLobby action for The Flight Deck in Oakland, California, opening the shuttered theatre doors to protestors in the midst of the Black Lives Matter movement. The Flight Deck staff and volunteers provided food, supplies, medical equipment, and access to bathrooms to hundreds of demonstrators who gathered at the nearby Oscar Grant/Frank Ogawa Plaza for several weeks. Sango's work on this action has been featured in Rolling Stone Magazine. |
