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How Iizukas parents met
Her dad, an economist, and her mom, who trained as a lawyer, met at a dance when both were attending school in the United States. Not long after the couple moved back to Japan for his work, Iizuka was born; the family lived in a house next to a fishing-supplies store in Tokyo’s Oi-machi district. -
The birth of Naomi Iizuka
She is a Japanese-American that was born in Tokyo, Japan, and her mother is an American Latina, and her father is a Japanese banker -
Iizuka and her family
headed to Jakarta, Indonesia, during a period of political turmoil. -
Iizuka earliest memories
the family relocated to the relative calm of Amsterdam -
Iizuka Father
landed a job at the World Bank, spurring the move to Washington. -
Schooling
Iizuka attended the National Cathedral School, has her BA in classical literature from Yale University -
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Iizukas Plays that went published
War of the Worlds (Written in collaboration with Anne Bogart) (2000) Language of Angels (2000) Aloha, Say the Pretty Girls (1999) Polaroid Stories (1997) Marlowe's Eye (1996) Skin (1995) Tattoo Girl (1994) Carthage (1994) Coxinga (1994) keniye (1994) Crazy Jane (1992) Portrait of Bianca (1992) Greenland (1992) Lizzy Vinyl (1990) And Then She Was Screaming (1990) Body Beautiful (1990) -
Schooling part 2
Spent one year at Yale Law School before eventually receiving her MFA in playwriting from University of California, San Diego -
Naomi Iizuka involvement with Playwright/ Influence
I was a theater critic in college. It was a revelation because I didn't grow up seeing theater at all. I wanted to make these stories with these live actors. I went into law school, and after my first year I went to work at this Wall Street law firm. That convinced me that this life was not for me. I needed to write and I needed to do that with all my energy. So I packed up and moved to Oakland in the fall of '88 and stayed a year until I went to San Diego. -
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Awards Iizuka has won
1995 Jerome Fellowship 1996 McKnight Advancement Grant 1998 PEN Center USA West Award for Drama 1998 Princeton University's Hodder Fellowship 1999 Whiting Award 2001 NEA/TCG Artist-in-Residence Grant 2001 Stavis Award from the National Theatre Conference 2001 Rockefeller Foundation MAP grant 2005 Alpert Award in the Arts 2006 Joyce Award winner 2007 PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater Award winner for a playwright in mid-career. Gerobe Foundation Fellowship -
Iizuka's Polaroid Stories
A modern adaptation of the Greek myth of Eurydice and Orpheus. Iizuka collapses classical literature and contemporary everyday life by making Minneapolis street kids the main characters of the play instead of mythical gods. The drug dealers, prostitutes, and homeless tell their stories, some real and some complete lies, which together create some sort of truth about the desolate, urban landscape that they find refuge in -
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Humana Festival of New American Plays
Artistic director Jory gave Iizuka her biggest career boost, programming three of her works. She will be back at the Humana Festival at the Actors Theatre of Louisville probably the nation’s highest-profile annual coming-out party for new drama with the March 20 premiere of her play “At the Vanishing Point.” It documents everyday life in a historic, working-class Louisville, Ky., neighborhood but brings a ghostly, speculative twist to the now-familiar, interview-based genre of reality theater. -
Inspiration for Polaroid Stories
Iizuka’s oeuvre stretches from the Navy bars of San Diego, where she set “Skin,” a contemporary adaptation of Georg Buchner’s bleak 19th-century drama, “Woyzeck” (it’s her only play to have been done in L.A., in a 1998 staging by the Relentless Theatre Company), to the streets of Minneapolis, where she met the gaggle of homeless kids who inspired “Polaroid Stories,” her modern retelling of Ovid’s “Metamorphoses.” -
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Iizukas Plays that went Published Part 2
Good Kids (2014) The Last Firefly (2011)
Concerning Strange Devices from the Distant West (2010) Ghostwritten (2009) After a Hundred Years (2008) Anon(ymous) (2006) Hamlet: Blood in the Brain (2006)
Strike-Slip (2006) At the Vanishing Point (2004) Revised in 2015[10] 17 Reasons (Why) (2003) 36 Views (2000) -
Iizuka contemplates what is real and what is authentic in her play 36 Views.
Some of the 36 scenes are set in contemporary America while others are set in Japan several hundred years ago. A New York Times critic notes, 'among Ms. Iizuka's well-demonstrated ideas is that human wishes persistently obscure the truth. All by ourselves we make it tougher to know what's what.' The play is about the unexpected discovery of an 11th-century Japanese pillow book and the struggle to construct reality in the midst of the uncertainty surrounding the book's origin and authenticity. -
36 Views
Berkeley Repertory and New York’s Public Theater staged “36 Views,” a story of mystery and intrigue set in a rarefied world of art scholars and dealers in Asian antiquities. -
Iizuka's background in classical literature
Her inspiration is 'fusing of classical styles and forms to modern and contemporary voices.' Evident in her adaptation of Hamlet Hamlet: Blood on the Brain, Johns Hopkins University Press describes her work as reinforcing 'a sense that the play's archetypal quality could be adapted to fit a society lacking resonance with either ancient Scandinavia or Elizabethan London….non-academic spectators could accept that classics illuminate modern society.' -
Teaching
She has taught playwriting at the University of Iowa and the University of Texas, Austin, and was a Professor of Dramatic Arts and Director of the Playwriting Program at University of California Santa Barbara until January -
World Premiere
in Concerning Strange Devices from the Distant West, Naomi Iizuka’s sexy puzzle-of-a-play that we are thrilled to introduce to Chicago in only its second production. It had its world premiere at Berkeley Repertory Theatre, where our literary manager Ben Thiem saw it -
Iizuka was commissioned to write Good Kids by the Big Ten Theatre Consortium
The initiative's goals are to encourage female playwrights and make it simpler for women to play roles on stage. In the movie Good Kids, a bunch of football players rape a high school student after she attends a party. The focus of the play is on rumors and how they impact society. Izuka consulted with college students to write Good Kids and sought their input on the subject of sexual assault and the steps that campuses can take to prevent and address it. -
Places where Good Kids was performed
Good Kids was produced at the University of Michigan (October 2–12, 2014), University of Iowa (February 8–15, 2015), Indiana University (February 6–14, 2015), University or Wisconsin Madison (February 27-March 8, 2015), University of Maryland (February 27-March 7, 2015), Purdue University (April 10–12, 15-18, 22-26, 2015), Penn State University, Ohio State University (October 27, 2014), and has scheduled productions at many other schools outside the Big Ten. -
Net Worth
Naomi Iizuka’s income source is mostly from being successful. $1 Million - $5 Million -
Iizuka current life
Has a son who is 9. She married Bruce McKenzie, actor and co-founder of Sledgehammer Theater. And she is 57 years old. She spent a couple of years in Minnesota, teaching playwriting to recovering addicts, to kids living in hamlets near the Canadian border and to aspiring professionals. She learned that her passion for teaching was comparable to -- and dovetailed with her compulsion to write. Now she is an assistant professor at UC Santa Barbara. -
Reference
https://theatre.ucsd.edu/people/faculty/playwriting/naomi-iizuka.html
https://stageagent.com/writers/7425/naomi-iizuka
https://staff.washington.edu/kendo/iizuka.html
https://playback.fm/person/naomi-iizuka
https://www.celebsagewiki.com/naomi-iizuka
https://pittgoodkids.weebly.com/the-playwright.html
https://timelinetheatre.com/person/naomi-iizuka/
https://prabook.com/web/naomi.iizuka/2093485
https://timelinetheatre.com/app/uploads/TimeLine_ConcerningStrangeDevices_Backstory.pdf -
Reference
Fabros, M. Gabot. "Iizuka, Naomi." Encyclopedia of Asian-American Literature, edited by Seiwoong Oh, 2nd ed., Facts on File, 2013. Facts on File Library of American Literature: Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Literature. Gale eBooks, link.gale.com/apps/doc/CX6255800121/GVRL?u=mcc_phoe&sid=bookmark-GVRL&xid=99d0af2c.
Accessed Nov 13. 2022.
https://www.sfgate.com/performance/article/Berkeley-world-premiere-for-Naomi-Iizuka-play-3271229.php -
Reference
"Naomi Iizuka." Gale Biography Online Collection, Gale, 2010. Gale In Context: Biography, link.gale.com/apps/doc/K1650007237/BIC?u=mcc_phoe&sid=bookmark-BIC&xid=f4cfa5a0. Accessed Nov 13. 2022.
Berson, Misha. “Naomi Iizuka.” American Theatre, vol. 15, no. 7, Sept. 1998, p. 56. EBSCOhost, https://search-ebscohost-com.ezproxy.pc.maricopa.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=1042914&site=ehost-live&scope=site.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/sd-et-fall-arts-theater-naomi-iizuka-20180822-story.html