A world premiere

The year is 1861. Herve Joncour buys and sells silkworms for a living. His small French town depends on him for its livelihood. Each year, Joncour travels to exotic locations around the world to acquire the silkworms. But one year, an epidemic strikes silkworms all over the world. Or nearly the whole world. There’s still Japan. And that is where Joncour journeys, to meet a wealthy village lord and his beautiful young mistress. There he will find what he’s looking for, and so much more.

Mary Zimmerman, known for her visually thrilling productions from exotic texts such as The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci and Metamorphoses, for which she won a Tony Award, will adapt this erotically charged novel for the stage.