A Conversation with Aya Ogawa

On 2 March 2026, TORCHES continues with a conversation with the nuanced and provocative award-winning writer, director, and performer Aya Ogawa.

Aya Ogawa is an award-winning Tokyo-born, Brooklyn-based creator and translator of theatre. They have devised, written, and directed many plays including oph3lia (HERE Arts Center), Journey to the Ocean (Foundry Theatre) and Ludic Proxy (The Play Company). They received an Obie Award for The Nosebleed (Lincoln Center Theater), which subsequently ran at Woolly Mammoth Theatre and toured to Walker Art Center, REDCAT, Wexner Center for the Arts, On the Boards, and the New National Theatre, Tokyo. They directed Haruna Lee’s Obie Award-winning Suicide Forest as well as Maiko Kikuchi and Spencer Lott’s 9000 Paper Balloons. Doris Duke Artist Award (2025); Helen Merrill Award for Playwriting (2023); Cullman Award for Extraordinary Creativity, Lincoln Center Theater (2022-2023); Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists award (2023); Playwrights’ Center’s McKnight Foundation National Residency and Commission (2023-24); President’s Award in Performing Arts, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (2015); MacDowell Fellow; resident playwright, New Dramatists.

TORCHES: 30+ Years of Downtown Performance

As co-founder of HERE Arts Center—described by the Obie committee as “a lasting home for the weird and wild in downtown performance”—Kristin Marting spent the past three decades immersed in making, witnessing, and supporting groundbreaking performance in New York City. TORCHES is a much needed exploration of New York City’s unique and influential downtown performance world from the 1990s through the 2020s. Part memoir, part oral history, and part cultural inquiry, TORCHES offers in-depth video conversations with more than thirty of the most imaginative and boundary pushing artists working in the field today. TORCHES is both a living archive and an offering for the future. Learning about these artists and their work is not just looking back; it can ignite what’s coming next. They are not only inventors of form—they are keepers of community, fire-starters for our future. See more about the project on the TORCHES website at torchesnyc.org.

About HowlRound TV 

HowlRound TV is a global, commons-based, peer-produced, open-access livestreaming and video archive project stewarded by the nonprofit HowlRound. HowlRound TV is a free and shared resource for live conversations and performances relevant to the world’s performing arts and cultural fields. Its mission is to break geographic isolation, promote resource sharing, and develop our knowledge commons collectively. Anyone can participate in this community of peer organizations revolutionizing the flow of information, knowledge, and access in our field by becoming a producer and co-producing with us. Learn more by going to our contribute content page.