Sea Silk
by Jasen Miyamoto and Jason Sill
Sea Silk is a "play with music" encompassing a multi-generational narrative following the lives of the last three women in the world capable of weaving the eponymous legendary textile, "Sea Silk". Full of whirlwind romance, heartache, tradition in the face of modernization, and the bonds of family, Sea Silk asks the question: "Why do we tell stories and who are they for?"
there are some stories that grip us like a riptide
that send us floundering head over heart, heart over head
stories of magnitudes unimaginable, with timbre like thunder
that leave us dazed and bruised and hurt and healing
for some time after
but the quiet stories
the ones told
whispered
in the dark
over the course
of many days
the ones that
leave your heart
not ravaged
and bleeding
but full of tiny
pinpricks
the ones that
value
small jokes
and
pockets
of air
stories
inextricable
from the
musicality
of the
world
those are the stories I fall in love with
Image Source: Morning Sea (1915), Hashio Kiyoshi
Book by Jasen Miyamoto, Music and Lyrics by Jason Sill.
[Untitled Video Game Musical]
by Jasen Miyamoto and Hannah Tobias
[Untitled Video Game Musical] is an original musical that, through the lens of video games, explores the lives, relationships, and the act of healing between four interconnected characters as they go through trauma and tumult.
(GABE is in his room, maybe)
(A towering DRAGON holds saran wrap and attempts to make GABE a shirt)
(GABE has his arms over his head)
DRAGON
So?
GABE
You can do better than that
DRAGON
What future am I careening towards, oh, great chosen seer
GABE
Surprisingly good job
DRAGON
Are you gonna fucking -
GABE
YOU’RE CAREENING towards something…
sad
You’re like a CFA or something. You make good money, but it’s just data entry and looking at spreadsheets and explaining your spreadsheets to other people. You like some of your coworkers, but most of them just annoy the shit out of you. But you moved to like Boston, or a neighborhood outside of Boston, but you still say you live in Boston, and they’re really the only people you know so you like golf with them on the weekends. And you like it. You get buzzed off of beer and the like little airplane bottles of Jack that you all keep in your golf bags next to your tees. You play a stupid game of if you accidentally pull a bottle instead of a tee, you have to take it like a shot. You rag on the caddies but tip them well and buy them drinks after and then you drive home drunk.
You’re engaged to this med school student brunette that you meet in a year or-
DRAGON
She hot?
GABE
(you broke my reverie)
Are you fucking for real right now?
DRAGON
Answer the question
GABE
Yeah she's hot
DRAGON
Nice
GABE
(forcing reverie, then settling into it)
And sometimes you still see your frat brothers, like you’ll go on a ski trip or something, but it’s not the same.
And that’ll be it. Just work and golf and a sports bar every other weekend.
DRAGON
I dunno, sounds nice
GABE
Really?
DRAGON
I got a good job, someone who loves me, and friends
And you’ll be there too
We’ll still see each other and kick it or I’ll hit you up on the phone and we’ll play a game or something
You’ll visit and I’ll take you golfing
GABE
(no drama)
Over my dead rottng corpse
DRAGON
You like to get daydrunk
GABE
Not like that
DRAGON
So why's it sad?
GABE
I dunno, I just - want something more for you?
DRAGON
You're in my arms
Asleep against my chest
I breathe in
Preparing to wake you
To brush away the dream
But then you smile
We’re in a small but extremely cozy and well furnished flat in East London. We’ll move further out of the city in a few years just like your parents did when they were pregnant with Ava. You’ll work at the National and pretend to hate it. You’ll come home every day with a new mortal enemy from the Marketing department and we’ll curse her name and drink to her downfall. You’ll take me to so. many. plays. and it’ll be hard at first, but we’ll see a performance of Hamlet with Andrew Scott and I’ll turn to you wide eyed in the audience and whisper excitedly “I get it” and Shakespeare will suddenly make sense to me and I’ll get emotional and begin to care very deeply and read them all and complain that I just wish Andrew Scott could read them to me and make them make sense.
We’ll play video games late into the night, drunk on wine and your laughter, and wake up for work late and hungover, tangled up in each other. I fly us to Paris and Barcelona and Amsterdam and Sardina, because I still make a shit ton of money, but we spend it doing things and being in places together. And I learn to sew and make things like candles and eggs benedict on the weekends even though it upsets your stomach because it’s your favorite and you love the way it tastes. And we keep learning. And growing. And changing.
(reverie)
(Bang. Hard cut.)
All images sourced from: scifianime.com
Book by Jasen Miyamoto, Music and Lyrics by Hannah Tobias, narrative collaborated on by both.