“Kurogo Me, Together!” | Izumi Ashizawa | Physical Fest 2026

Wednesday 9th September

6:00pm

This is a participatory performance art. The audience is invited to make the performer “invisible” by putting on the Kurogo costume pieces.

[Definition: Kurogo]

Kurogo is a figure on the stage dressed in black in the Japanese traditional theatre genres of Bunraku puppetry and Kabuki. Kurogo signifies  “invisible”/ “ non-existent”, functioning to support the on-stage characters. In both of these 400-year-old Bunraku and Kabuki, women have not been permitted to perform professionally on the stage. 

Izumi Ashizawa is a Japanese performance and visual artist, born/trained in Tokyo, based in New York. Rooted in her deep study/training in Japanese culture, she specializes in transmedia performance art, particularly keen on reinterpreting male-only-permitted Japanese traditional cultural codes, and places them in a different context to give a new meaning. 

 “Izumi Ashizawa has created a gut-wrenching realm of discovery where commonsense is thrown aside and your latent instincts are awakened.”—DC Metro Theater Arts

Ashizawa’s direction have the same kind of ritualistic beauty that one might find in a Japanese tea ceremony”—AmericanTheatre Web

 “The show conjures up an otherworldly atmosphere that makes it intoxicating.”—Washington City Paper