Artists' LAB #9 presents 
​Amphibians
                                                          A performing research
                                                                                      by Sumire Muratsu & Yushu Wang

Saturday, March 7th 
7pm
At Grace & St. Paul's Church
​123 West 71st Street, New York
About The Show:
​A frog wanted to become a human,
A frog believed it could be a human--
After all, it was nothing but a frog.
A frog has a frog’s sorrows,
a frog has a frog’s joys,
and at the unbearable distance of a voice saying such things,
ah, why am I a frog?
Is there nowhere for a frog like this to live?
When the back of its forehead spins upside down,
whirling and dancing,
the traffic light turns green.
Ah, the light—there is so much light.
Perhaps because I am a frog.
You must buy sunglasses — the dragonfly cried.
Cried—written as cried, meaning wept.
On the way home,
I must remember to buy detergent and toilet paper.
Team: 
Writer / Director: Sumire Muratsu
Co-creator: Yushu Wang
Performers: Sumire Muratsu & Yushu Wang
Lighting Designer: Chase Kniffen
Script Supervisor, Voice, Documentation: Milo 
Production Assistant: Michiho Shimasaki

Artists' LAB: 
Co-Program Directors: Chase Kniffen, Saki Kawamura
​Supported by Grace & St.Paul’s Church, LEIMAY Studio Subsidy Program, Movement Research, Triskelion Arts
SUMIRE MURATSU | Creator, Performer
Sumire Muratsu is an artist from Japan, who works with the body as a medium to explore the underlying logics of nature — shared across micro-organisms, planets, and human beings alike. Drawing from Eastern philosophy and its ecological perspectives, their work seeks to extract and translate cosmic phenomena that give form to our invisible experiences, offering insight into psychological patterns, particularly those defined as mental illness.
YUSHU WANG | Co-creator, Performer
Yushu Wang is a filmmaker and performer from Suzhou, China. Working across moving image, theatre, and performance, she attends to unseen and unspeakable affects that quietly shape human experience while carrying a latent political charge. Moving between cultures, she seeks to deconstruct assimilative structures by turning to vernacular forms of expression as sites of reinvention.
CHASE KNIFFEN | Lighting Designer 
Chase Kniffen is a NYC-based director and designer.  Most recently, he directed and designed scenery and projections for the world-premiere production of Watcher in the Woods. He was the Associate Artistic Director of Virginia Repertory Theatre for ten seasons, where he produced, directed, and designed numerous productions. Select Directing credits include The Sound of Music, The Color Purple, Dreamgirls, Other Desert Cities, Caroline, or Change, Violet, Next to Normal, Gypsy, Fun Home and South Pacific. He has won multiple Richmond Theatre Critics Circle Awards for his work on those productions. Chase has also designed sets, lighting, and projections for multiple plays, musicals and concerts. He received his BA in Theatre with a concentration on Scenic Design from Virginia Commonwealth University and his MFA in Directing from Pace University. www.chasekniffen.com.
​
Date & Time
Sat. March, 2026
7pm

VENUE
Grace & St. Paul's Church
(123 W71st, New York) 

​RUN TIME
50 minuets
​
TICKET INFO
$5-10