Two men, barefoot and wearing traditional loincloths around their waists, tussled with each other on a stage transformed to look like a sumo ring.
A fighting consultant, who had been observing the rehearsal nearby, stepped in to offer advice: The men’s arm movements were too straight; their motions needed to be smoother and more circular. Moments later, the two actors were at it again: reaching out, shifting their weight and then pushing off each other in a grappling exchange.
New York theatergoers have seen it all, including shows about sports — which are not uncommon. But rarer, nonexistent even, is a theatrical work about sumo wrestling. Now, Lisa Sanaye Dring’s “Sumo” is transporting Off Broadway audiences at the Public Theater to an intimate sumo wrestling facility in Tokyo — known as a heya, or wrestling stable — where bare-chested actors fearlessly slap into each other in a heap of flesh and sweat.
“I’m interested in people who use their bodies differently than I use my body,” Dring said, reflecting on what led her to write “Sumo.” “It feels very much linked to me — the fighting and the human story — because their humanity is inside how they fight.”
The play itself tells the story of Akio, a newcomer to the heya who, because he’s considered rather small by sumo standards, isn’t taken seriously at first. An unranked wrestler trying to prove himself, he endures brutality as he goes about sweeping up rice, bathing the highest-ranking wrestler and doing other servant-like tasks that he has been relegated to performing. Before long, though, he quickly proves himself and rises to become one of the group’s strongest combatants.
Through his journey, theatergoers learn about sumo wrestling’s origins, its spiritual connections to Shinto, the historical Japanese religion, and other aspects of its lore. But the real highlight is seeing the actors grappling, tossing and rolling with one another in the ring in ambitiously choreographed fight sequences that required months of physical training.
Dring and the show’s director, Ralph B. Peña, were initially unsure of how to portray the fights. They first experimented with shadow puppets, but Peña said that “would have been a cop-out.”
As Peña and Dring committed to having the actors wrestle, and doing so smoothly and within budget, they hired two fighting directors — one as an intimacy director and another as a sumo consultant — to ensure safety, accuracy and precision.
“I think it is the hallmark of this particular play,” said the sumo consultant, James Yaegashi, who grew up in Japan and practices martial arts. “The fights aren’t just a cool thing, it’s actually a very integral part to the story.”
Jesse Green, the chief theater critic for The New York Times, wrote in his review that “Peña’s staging, mostly within a simple 15-foot sumo ring designed by Wilson Chin, provides plenty of intense action, which the men’s size and strength make almost elemental, like collisions of planets.”
Dring, who was born in Hawaii and is of Japanese descent, watched a live sumo event in Japan about a decade ago while visiting that country shortly after her mother’s death. The spectacle, she said, helped her feel closer to her ancestors. As she learned more about the sport, she became especially taken with the devotion of sumo wrestlers, who abandon their personal lives to practice the combat form.
“There is a beauty and a spirituality and an honor inside of it,” she said about the deeply ritualistic sport. She tried to work that into her play, which had its premiere at La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego in 2023. (The play is a co-production of La Jolla Playhouse and Ma-Yi Theater Company.)
When selecting the cast, Peña said he looked for “quadruple threats,” actors who could sing, act and dance and who possessed the proper body frame. The process, he said, took more than a year, with some candidates coming from Japan and Hawaii. The auditions themselves had physical components, and included testing the actors’ flexibility in a squat-like position. Once the cast of nine had been assembled, actors spent the first few weeks of rehearsals in training that included lower-body exercises to mimic sumo wrestlers’ stances.
“There’s a really American impulse, to be really high in the body,” said Chelsea Pace, the intimacy director, referring to football tackling and rugby. “One of the things we’ve had to come back to time and time again is ‘Drop your weight.’”
Pace said they had incorporated safe words and physical cues for actors to communicate with one another during fights. The actors also have access to sports massages.
“It has been a lifesaver, just because I’ve been in constant physical pain,” David Shih, who portrays Mitsuo, the heya’s highest-ranked wrestler, said with a chuckle.
Shih, who had no prior sumo wrestling experience, had an existing knee injury, and during a recent show, he wore a brace that matched his skin tone. In his free time, he said, he watched videos of real sumo practices to understand the tempo — most matches last only seconds in tournaments known as honbashos.
Both Shih and Scott Keiji Takeda, who plays Aiko, said they had put on weight to prepare for their roles by increasing their dietary intake, though they said they had not been pressured to do so by the play’s leadership team.
“I think it’s helped me feel more like I inhabit the role and that I’m living that lifestyle,” said Shih, who said he had gained about 20 pounds.
The experience has been a learning curve for the actors, and those in the creative team said they had been mindful about adding elements that helped the audience learn more about sumo. In one scene, Mitsuo scolds Aiko for his joyous tone after Mitsuo wins a match. Rikishi — the Japanese term for sumo wrestlers — do not celebrate after a contest, which is an actual tenet of the sport. Narration and visual aids at the start of the play explain what has long been believed to be the sport’s origin: Two deities battled each other centuries ago to determine the fate of Japan.
For added effect, a ceremonial taiko drummer bangs his instrument above the stage at certain intervals. Takeda, who is making his Off Broadway debut, said he had grown to love sumo wrestling more as he began preparing for the role, which gave him a different perspective on the play’s potential appeal.
“It’s kind of bridging the gap,” he said, “between a sporting event and theater.”
