Rising Arizono

Mami Arizono turns up in the strangest places: as a performer with the theatre company Zoo District, as a strange multi-instrumentalist imp in the Sam Shepard deconstruction "Go True West," as the accordionist for Zooey Deschanel and Sam Shelton's retro swing band the Pretty Babies (that's Mami in the middle, though her face is blocked).

This past summer she turned up as a director in her native Japan at the Toga Summer Arts Festival. Lest you have a vision of a Roman-themed beerbust, Toga happens to be the name of the hometown of performance training pioneer Tadashi Suzuki, whose intensive techniques have been embraced and taught by many American companies.

Arizono directed a scene from a play well-known in Japan, Yukio Mishima's "My Friend Hitler." The scene called for just two actors, but she snuck in an extra two silent "movement" performers, one of them her boyfriend (and "Go True West" co-star), non-Japanese-speaking Ben Simonetti.

The reception was good enough, she said, that it's about "80 percent sure" that the hit "Go True West" will visit Japan next spring for a performance at Suzuki's own theater in Toga. Are Japanese audiences familiar with the original "True West," I wondered?

"I don’t think so," she said. (Actually a production was just up in Tokyo.) "But it's not a wordy show, it's a lot of movement, so it'll be good for Japanese people."

Accordion to Mami, at least.