Kuroko : a play / Tetsuro Shigematsu ; foreword by Jessa Alston-O’Connor ; foreword by Heidi Taylor ; afterword by Mark Robins and the author.

xxv, 131 pages ; 22 cm.

Maya is hikikomori, an extreme recluse who hasn’t left her bedroom in 5 years, spending all her time in Virtual Reality. So her father hires an actor to befriend her online to entice her back into the real world. How? By visiting the scariest place on earth, Suicide Forest. A young woman spends all her time in her VR because she hasn’t left her room in 5 years. Her father has only one year left to live, so he hires a young man to befriend her online, and lure her back into the real world. When we lose what gives our lives purpose, when the distance between us and those closest to us seems impossible to bridge, where do we turn? Can virtual worlds offer real solution? Is an honourable death better than a meaningless life? This is a story about a family who are worlds apart, separated by pain, from past and present, alone in the real world and the virtual, each unsure of the way back home. How do we find our way back to ourselves, to each other, to our lives, when it feels like there is nothing left for us in this world anymore? This is a story about finding something real in the places we least expect it, of building bridges where healing seems impossible, and saving others as a way of saving ourselves. A father who feels his family is better off without him, a daughter who retreats completely into the virtual world, a family torn apart by the past with little hope for a future. But each discovers the desire to save each other. And in doing so, perhaps save themselves.

Produced by Vancouver Asian Canadian Theatre.

Text in English; includes some text in Japanese and Korean.

9781772012699

Men

D S5554ku 2020