Plays
In a fictional world of philosophy and language, Sheela joins three great thinkers from the past (Ludwig Wittgenstein, Walter Benjamin, and Paul Shepard) for a spirited game of mahjong. As they play, her energy conjures Joseph Beuys as a mythological hare. Invisible to the players, he interjects cultural incantations while the players contemplate how language evolved from naming animals to representing them with signs and how myths serve the human need to imagine. Physical chair-play creates an escalating rhythm as tensions build and the hare inspires Sheela to be more confrontational. As the chair-e-ography builds to a crescendo, Sheela questions a philosophical theory and wins the game.
WHY I LIKE IT. Drama Editor JANET EHRLICH COLSON writes for the March 2021 issue of Fleas on the Dog (https://fleasonthedog.com):
Barbara Yoshida’s INTUITIVE LEAP is a play that leaps across boundaries from theatre to performance art and blurs the edges of both. It’s wildly risky and marvelously weird with the middle-aged WOMAN-AS-HARE in a bunny mask confronting a masculine yet socially awkward MANNY. And did I mention that WOMAN-AS-HARE is buckass naked? THE ENTIRE TIME? That’s commitment! Here we are looking at masks as the very tools of social distancing, but the mask in this play takes us back to our shamanic roots and allows for the transformation of the symbolic into a living and breathing effigy in the form of WOMAN-AS-HARE. Behind the mask lies a feminine/Jungian/Dickensian rabbit hole of insights about our relationships and our humanity. Evidently, MANNY has summoned WOMAN-AS-HARE from the bowels of his psyche to teach him some of life’s most difficult lessons. WOMAN-AS-HARE doesn’t have to do it alone, however. There’s a disembodied PRIEST and some vocal cows ready to jump into the mix. Add some shadow puppets and get ready for this play to delight, disturb, and knock your socks off.
In an absurdist take on the treatment of animals, a young New York intellectual interrogates seven suitors in a TV game show, promising to marry one of them. With the help of a mythical hare-woman, she struggles to overcome her fear of submitting to a physical attraction and being dominated by a masculine force that threatens to overwhelm her.
Successes
Film of my short play, “Language Games,” – finalist – Roma Short Film Festival – June 2021
Film of my short play, “Language Games,” selected – the Virtual Cinema Festival – May 2021
Film of my short play, “Language Games,” awarded The Best Woman Empowerment Film – New Wave Short Film Festival, Munich, Germany – May 2021
Film of my short play, “Language Games,” accepted/selected – The Best Shorts Competition - Experimental category - May 2021
Film of my short play, “Language Games,” selected – New Ohio’s NYC Indie Theatre Film Festival, New York City – March 2021
Film of my short play, “Language Games,” selected – Irondale Center’s On Women Festival, New York City – March 2021
Fleas on the Dog online publication, Issue 8, March 2021: my short play, "Intuitive Leap," with essay by Drama Editor, Janet Colson: https://fleasonthedog.com
Film clip of my short play, “Language Games,” presented as part of "AD ABSURDUM: The Politics and Poetics of Absurdity in Avant-Garde Art and Thought," a symposium presented by the Philadelphia Avant-Garde Studies Consortium (PASC) – December 4, 2020
Film of my short play, “Language Games,” selected – Rogue Theater Festival, New York City - December 2020
Fleas on the Dog online publication, Issue 6, June 2020: my short play, "Language Games," https://fleasonthedog.com