Stage Notes: Soul Samurai

Soul Samurai is a co-production of two theater companies, Ma-Yi and Vampire Cowboys. I have seen two Vampire Cowboys shows: 2006’s Living Dead in Denmark and last year’s Fight Girl Battle World. Their shows are smart, well-produced and about as much fun as you can have in a theater. The two V.C. guiding lights are playwright/fight choreographer Qui Nguyen and director Robert Ross Parker. They have a joint sensibility that appreciates action movies, physical comedy and comic books, but they are also true theatrical savants, and understand all the magic necessary to put on a great show. Also, their protagonist, kick-ass heroes are often women. Here it’s Dewdrop, a female Samurai, who avenges her lover’s murder in Coney Island and has to pass through a decimated Brooklyn to get back to her home turf on the L.E.S. I recently spoke with Parker.

Hi Robert. What highly physical paean to pop culture do you have for us today?
It’s a post-apocalyptic, hip-hop Samurai play. It’s a classic Samurai tale; the story of a woman becoming a warrior. It’s her journey, and how she escapes from Coney Island and gets back to Manhattan.

Your shows are invariably very cinematic.
A lot of our shows, whether it’s zombies or sci-fi or blaxploitation or samurai, we take the genre, and whether it’s been seen on film, TV or in comic books, we do it live.

At the shows I’ve been to, the audiences roar with delight.
It’s all about making theater that is fun, exciting and interesting.

Is that your theatrical philosophy?
We hope to make the play work on a bunch of levels. We want it to be a piece of art that asks questions and has ideas, but at the same time be a bad-ass, ass-kicking extravaganza.

I see you have five actors here, but many characters.
There’s an orgy of doubling, many characters. It’s great fun for the actors and the audience. There are puppets in the show too, people show up as puppets.

Tell me a little about the story.
New York has been ravaged by war, either in the future or in an alternative past. In this scenario, New York is controlled by gangs, who are controlled by three shoguns -- warlords -- like in feudal Japan. Samurai meets blaxploitation.

OK, but what actually happens.
Dewdrop fights her way past these gang members. It’s about her story too. We have the classic training montage, she’s trained by a master.

Is there a main villain?
Boss 2K, of the Kingsborough Kings; he’s the shogun of Brooklyn. Her mission is to assassinate him. His gang, the Longtooths, are trying to stop her. So we have these fabulous Samurai fights, with weapons, swords and martial arts.

I appreciate the way you like to surprise your audience.
One thing we like to do at Vampire Cowboys is to go some place new in each scene, introduce a new element, or a new style of telling the story or a new way of staging it. Like using puppets to tell the story, or tell it from a different character’s point of view, or do it physically without words, or suddenly the characters are rapping. We try to find different ways to tell the story, and of course, the fur flies. You can’t bore people.

HERE Arts Centre, 145 Sixth Ave., (212) 352-3101. Previews Feb. 14, opens Feb. 19-Mar. 15. Wed.-Sun., 8:30 p.m.; one additional performance, Tues, Feb. 17, 8:30 p.m.; matinees, Suns., Feb. 15 & 22, 4 p.m.; Sats., Feb. 28, Mar. 7 & 14, 4 p.m. $25/$20.