The Connection

The Connection follows two Japanese women over twenty years – from an abandoned friendship to a chance encounter. In 1986, Rumi and Mika, were roommates at a Womens’ Residence in New York City. Twenty years later, they meet by happy coincidence on the subway. Now Rumi, a designer who owns her own store, is married with three children. Mika remains single, perpetually youthful, and living pretty much the same life she led twenty years earlier – studying dance at the same school, wearing the same cheap clothes, living in the same room, and working at the same restaurant. Mika seems satisfied with her sparse lifestyle, and not very envious of Rumi’s success, wealth, and full family life. But when a subway delay forces the two women to catch up on old wounds, their once-abandoned friendship is again tested. The women become more intimate in those few moments on a desolate subway car than they did in weeks of living together. As the play progresses it becomes clear that their short room share two decades prior has changed their lives forever, and the two women piece together the exact circumstances behind their hasty separation. Written and directed by Japanese-born, New York based playwright Masayo Nishimura.