American director Sonia Royal takes a classic Japanese folktale about a boy found in a peach and transfigures it into a new-age narrative about overcoming personal demons and self-discovery. Donning full kabuki makeup, she explores masculinity and gender performance using a Japanese art that has historically barred women from participation. The director tell us more about the inspiration behind—and symbolism of—her radical new film:

"Today our social ways of being are evolving rapidly, colliding constantly with tradition or ‘the way things have always been done’. As a young artist, I dedicate my practice to exploring themes of identity and consumption through video and sculpture. Having been raised in Florida, Singapore, and Australia with a Mexican and Japanese background, I am very cognizant of the shaky foundations on which identity is built.

Part of what drew me to the story of Momotaro is that it is a beloved tale with a history of adaptation. I want to perform kabuki (an art form that is inaccessible to me as a female and as a "foreign" Japanese but nonetheless an art form that I love and admire greatly) and wanting to explore my relationship to my body, my gender, and the way that the societies I have grown up in have molded that identity. Momotaro provides a simple, heroic narrative, and much like in the vain of kabuki, the interest for the viewer lies not in the tale being told but the way in which it is retold.

Grounding Momotaro in South Florida also freed me from a faithful interpretation. It is like a fantasy in which there is a Momotaro born in Japan and another in America.  Although a cherished memory of my childhood, Momotaro has often been adapted to imbue the nationalist agenda of the Japanese government. In fact the first feature-length animation made in Japan was a wartime adaptation of Momotaro in which Momotaro and his friends represent the might of the imperial navy.

Throughout the film, much of the tradition of kabuki is adapted subtly, like the main demon's blue makeup alluding to blue as a color for evil forces in kabuki or Momotaro's red face lines alluding to red as a heroic color. The colors yellow, purple, blue and brown are not colors typically used to represent demons in the West but are commonly associated with folkloric demons in Japan. The kuroko, or stage hands/shadow people of kabuki, are reinvented as BDSM subs and embody the  'feminine' role of caretakers.

I sparsely use traditional kabuki music, which was a choice to create tension between image and sound. The sound is from several sources but primarily from a Japanese musician, Sugai Ken, who makes electronic music heavily influenced by traditional Japanese music, often with a connection to water. Additionally, the hair, makeup, and costuming is a combination of kabuki, BDSM, and American 90s and naughties media such as Max Keeble's Big Move.

Ultimately, I am a not-so-Japanese Japanese, born and living in America, reckoning with my body and the way that ideals of femininity and global expectations of masculinity reverberate in my embodiment."