YUKI KAWAHISA 

is a native of Japan, a proud immigrant with an artist green card. She is an actor, performing artist, (also occasionally, a playwright, director, choreographer) who’s main focus is theatre art. She is based in New York, working/collaborating across disciplines with various artists, as well as working on her own. Hailed by The New York Times as “simple and brutal as a knife to the throat.” (Americana Kamikaze) and “dynamite” (FEAST), Kawahisa has appeared in some of the most exciting new, and often experimental, theatre pieces in New York. She has been seen at various downtown and off-Broadway venues and museums in New York and seen internationally as well, in Canada, Germany, France, Denmark, Italy, Australia, Indonesia and Japan.

Kawahisa has also worked with internationally acclaimed theatre directors and companies, such as Robert Wilson and Richard Forman, Taiwanese avant-garde theatrical group Shakespeare’s Wild Sisters and award-winning Chinese director, Chong Wang. October 2021, Kawahisa was invited by inclusive theatre company Glad Teater in Copenhagen, Denmark to participate in their first international artistic development workshop in collaboration with the famous U.K theatre company Complicité. She continues working with the artists at the Glad Teater since then and now training their 18 actors with special needs, devising a piece with them and making her European debut as a director with their first collaborative piece “marbles” (Thorvaldsens Museum, Copenhagen). She is particularly interested in and familiar with physical theatre, devising and movement based work. While it is challenging, she enjoys devising/collaborative work and finds it very much inspiring and rewarding.

Throughout the pandemic, Kawahisa continued her creative practice with her project “HenSin-MetaMorPhosis: One Morning Yuki Wake Up and She Was a Bear" and made videos as a Bear (wrote, performed, shoot, edited and streamed) everyday for 560 days.

Kawahisa debut-ed and toured with her first written solo “The Kimono Loosened” (directed by Maureen Robinson), received very positive reviews throughout Canada and in New York. Her most recent piece “ten dreams of metamorphoses or me talk dirty someday” is her second solo and first story-telling piece.

Some of Kawahisa’s frequent collaborators are Aya Ogawa (playwright/directer), The Million Underscores (experimental theatre company), Melissa Lehman (dancer/performance artist) and Ursula Endlicher (multimedia artist). Kawahisa has been a member of the curating team at The Brick Theatre in Brooklyn New York since 2020.

She has studied Noh (trained in Kita style with Kita School masters in Japan), Nihon Buyo (Japanese classic dance), Butoh and with the masters in Bali, Balinese dance and Wayang Kulit (traditional shadow puppet theatre). She also practice Tai-Chi, Clowning, Mask Work and View Point. She has also studied at the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute, completed the two-year certificate program. She combines these materials to create her own unique form of dance and theater. She has studied Noh (trained in Kita style with Kita School masters in Japan), Nihon Buyo (Japanese classic dance), Butoh and with the masters in Bali, Balinese dance and Wayang Kulit (traditional shadow puppet theatre). She also practice Tai-Chi, Clowning, Mask Work and View Point. She has also studied at the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute, completed the two-year certificate program. She combines these materials to create her own unique form of dance and theater. Kawahisa strongly believes that the most essential thing as an artist is to continue,  continue to be curious and enjoy, to practice, to learn, to create and most importantly, to share it with others.

Theatre credits include,

- Kool: Danceing in My Mind by Robert Wilson (Guggenheim Museum, Baryshnikov Arts Center, Guild Hall, Akademie der Kunste, Berlin, Germany)

- SKIN MEAT BONE by Robert Wilson, composed by Alvin Lucier (Watermill Center, NY)

- Americana Kamikaze by Temporary Distortion (Performance Space 122, New York, EXIT Festival, Creteil Maison des Arts, Paris/ VIA Festival International, Maubeuge, France/ World Theater Festival Power House, Brisbane, Australia) 

- The Bridge Project  by Richard Forman

- WONDER/LUST by Andrew Ondrejcak (Teatro La Tea, HERE Arts Center)

- FEAST by Andrew Ondrejcak (Incubator Arts Project, UTR Festival, the Public Theater)

- KINGS OF MACEDONIA (Music by Shara Warden, Prelude Festival)

- ELIJAH GREEN” (THE KITCHEN)

- Toshiki Okada's Time's Journey Through a Room

  (Directed by Dan Rothenberg, Produced by The Play Company, A.R.T/New York Theatres)

- Suicide Forest (Obie Award winning play by Haruna Lee, directed by Aya Ogawa,

  Bushwick    Starr, Ma-Yi Theatre Company, A.R.T/New York Theatres)

- Aya Ogawa's Ludic Proxy (The Play Company, Walker Space Theater)

- SPEECH by Shayok Misha Chowdhury/Lightning Rod Special

- You Are Under Our Space Control by Object Collection (La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club)

Other international credits include,

- The Kimono Loosened by Yuki Kawahisa (Canada Tour, Vancouver, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Edmonton, Calgary, BC Festival of the Art, Fort St. John, UNO Festival, Victoria)

- Kiss Kiss Bang Bang 2.0 by Chong Wang (Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre, Tokyo Festival 2017)

- In viaggiob verso Eutopia by Instabili Vaganti

Teatro Dimora (L’arboreto, Italy), Teatro Castagnoli (Scansano, Italy), Teatro nel Bicchiere Festiva