Hisako’s House is where the heart is for choreographer and dancer Robyn Mineko Williams, who invites audiences to experience the 50-minute piece performed in her grandmother’s mid-century home in Lombard.
Rebellious caught up with the show’s creator, RMW&A (Robyn Mineko Williams and Artists) director and Walder Foundation Platform Award winner, to discuss the evolution of this immersive project.
Janet Arvia: What is the inspiration behind Hisako’s House?
Robyn Mineko Williams: Hisako’s House was born from a curiosity of my grandmother’s life and how her life experiences and choices thereafter rippled through the family. As a Japanese American teenager during World War II, she was incarcerated in Arkansas while she was in high school — and I was just always curious how that pretty traumatic experience, that wasn’t talked about, how that could have affected or how it did affect the rest of her life and [her] choices as a mom and woman. So, it really just came from wanting to interview my grandma and learn more about her life as she was 93 at the time when I began talking with her during the pandemic.
Why did you choose to stage the performance in your grandmother’s home?
The house is a character, the house is essential to this piece. It is a container for all of the memories and I do believe that spaces hold memories and so I [want] guests to be able to experience this work inside of the place…where the history lives, where my grandma cooked, where she and I talked, where there were these decades of life experiences that I’ve been learning about. I think that’s a pretty unique experience and I hope that the feeling of the carpet and the smells of the kitchen do impact the performance in ways that a traditional theater space might not.
What do you hope audiences come away with after experiencing Hisako’s House?
I am always very happy and grateful for people to be open enough to spend their time coming in the first place…In my dream of dreams I would hope that there was a connection made, a memory remembered, a feeling that was felt. I think that those things can be very connective and maybe unlocking of sorts of a memory or an emotion — just something, anything that authentically comes or is brought up is really lovely or valuable and I would be ecstatic if that was an effect of the work.
Chicago instrumentalist and musician Macie Stewart composed music and soundscapes for Hisako’s House. How did your collaboration come about?
Macie Stewart is one of the most brilliant artists that I know and her contributions to this piece are giant. Macie and I talked a bit about the themes and elements of the work that were playing around in my head and then we went to my grandma’s house and we just started to record sounds of the house. I shared a lot of interviews with my family and myself talking. We talked about the sounds that felt important to me and to my family members in thinking about the house and our lives there and my grandma. We talked about our own musical influences [and] songs my grandma and grandpa used to listen to. We just really wanted to create a world for this piece to live in and create soundscapes and a musical composition that felt like you were enveloped in a place [where] memory is in a nonlinear timeline. Macie just has a really intuitive way about her and I felt like she was a mindreader at times with the music that she was composing and the soundscapes that she was building — it just really captured the spirit of the work and of my family.
You’ve served as a dance instructor, choreographer, film consultant, director and performing artist. How do each of these disciplines inform the other?
I feel like all of these roles definitely inform one another in the way that I’m always just learning, in every attempt to take on a task or a project it or in any of these roles. I think it’s sort of like life. In my role as a mom or as a human on this planet, my hope is to keep open, keep learning. Take that experience, take the tools with you and try to move forward with more of it to inform the next steps. I feel really lucky, it’s such a gift to have the opportunity to try out these different facets and roles and to try to look at these projects from all these different sides. Working with and learning from the collaborators around me allows for this growth. I feel very grateful to have that in my life.
Isaac Aoki, Jesse Obremski, Jie-Hung Connie Shiau, and Stephanie Terasaki will perform Hisako’s House (Aug. 16-25). The artists will also be on hand during a special post-show family style meal (Aug. 24). Click here for tickets.