Natsu Onoda Power, Ph.D. specializes in adapting texts into new works of visual theatre, using techniques of comics/graphic novels, animation, and kamishibai (Japanese paper-placard storytelling form). Original works include Postcards from Ihatov (1StStage Tysons), Thumbelina (Imagination Stage), The Lathe of Heaven (Spooky Action Theater, Helen Hayes Awards for Best New Adaptation and Best Scenic Design), The T Party (writer/ director, Forum Theatre/ Company One), Astro Boy and the God of Comics (writer/ director, The Studio Theatre; Company One Theatre; Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Director and Outstanding Production Design). Favorite directing credits include Qui Nguyen’s Vietgone (The Studio Theater), David Henry Hwang’s Yellow Face (Theatre J) and Mary Zimmerman’s The White Snake (Baltimore Center Stage), and the world premiere of Tennessee Williams’s lost play The Lady from the Village of Falling Flowers at Provincetown Tennessee Williams Festival.
Natsu’s current research/ creative interests include kamishibai; manga; US-Okinawa relations; food and food culture; go-go music (Washington DC’s native music genre).
Natsu holds a Ph.D. in Performance Studies from Northwestern University, and is the author of God of Comics: Osamu Tezuka and the Creation of Post World War II Manga (The University Press of Mississippi, 2009).
Education
PhD, Northwestern University