Doctor Chi!
"Fierce, diabolical, but human and vulnerable at its core... In swell foop, Sakamoto has rewritten film history and introduced Chi Theory into the larger discourse." - Peter Frank, LA Weekly
"Mesmerizing...rare and strange and somehow beautiful." - Sasha Anawalt, KCRW Dance Notes
Written, directed and choreographed by Michael Sakamoto
Featuring Michael Morrissey, Franc Baliton, Rochelle Fabb, Jill Miller, Robert Berg and Michael Sakamoto and others
70 minutes
in English with French and German
Doctor Chi! is a wild, nostalgic and fun-filled play and dance theater work based on the fictional Doctor Chi science fiction film series. The show is in three languages and three acts, each consisting of scenes from different Doctor Chi films from the 1920's and 1960's in Germany and France. Theater narrative, butoh and multimedia set pieces combine in a subversion of German Expressionism, Cold War paranoia and counterculture chaos.
Inspired by the inherently subversive humanity in many horror and science fiction film genre conventions, the Doctor Chi character is a brilliant scientist on the loose in the underworld throughout Asia and Europe. By joining the simultaneous occidental fascination and paranoia of things eastern with the resident insecurity and emotional anarchy of the 1920's, the original Doctor Chi is designed as a fusion of all that is both light and dark in the soul. This perception lasts for over forty years of the characterÕs history, transforming into an underlying anxiety and emotional vulnerability on the part of audiences who subconsciously identify with his well-meaning but dark persona.