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Totoro Stage Actress Comments on Playing Mei
posted on by Andrew Osmond
Mei Mac plays Mei Kusakabe, alongside Ami Okumura Jones as her older sister Satsuki.
Although the Guardian interview does not mention it, Mei Mac previously played the role of San, the warrior girl raised by wolves, in a stage version of Miyazaki's film Princess Mononoke. This play was created by the British company Whole Hog Theatre, and it ran both in London and Shibuya, Tokyo in 2013.
The interview is headed, "I gave a piece of my soul to My Neighbour Totoro." In the interview, Mac remembers preparing for (arguably) the play's central scene, Mei's first meeting with Totoro. "They wanted to check whether one puppet could support the weight of a human being. Because I'd worked in circus, I offered to climb up and find out. That was the moment everyone went: Oh, Mei's going to play Mei! (....) I become very at one with that particular puppet – I end up eating quite a lot of hair."
Mac also talks of children not being able to believe that she isn't actually a child when she comes out of the stage door. She discusses Studio Ghibli's non-binary morality, and how the play is a celebration of theatre. "We show our workings and the puppeteers are part of the world. (...) Everything in Totoro is analogue. Anything we do, you can do."
Mac was born in Birmingham to Hong Kong immigrants. She originally planned to study medicine, but she was inspired to take up an acting career when she met actors from the Yellow Earth group (now New Earth Theatre). She discusses the "bamboo ceiling," the financial and cultural barriers that frustrate east Asian and south-east Asian actors in Britain, and how she was first offered stereotypical roles. "It was very dehumanising, I felt objectified and really othered. (...) It felt strange that people could not see me as part of the fabric of British society."
She says things are improving, though that's only due to community activism. "There are so many shoulders that I stand on in order to be here. One of my mantras in life is to make my shoulders broad enough for others to stand on too."
The trailer for the new run of the play is below:
Tickets are available here. As of writing, all performances up to January 2024 are sold out;
My Neighbor Totoro originally premiered at the Barbican Centre on October 8, 2022 and it had a 15-week run to January 21, 2023.
Deadline previously reported that there will be new puppets in the returning show, with director Phelim McDermott saying they will be made stronger so they last longer. He describes the puppets in the original production as the prototypes.
He also says that he would love the show to come to New York.
More than 130,000 people saw the play during its original London run. It was presented by the RSC and Hayao Miyazaki's longtime composer Joe Hisaishi, who created the music for the original film and serves as the play's executive producer. Tom Morton-Smith (Oppenheimer) adapted the story, and Phelim McDermott (Akhnaten) directed the production. The play was made in collaboration with the English theatre company Improbable and Japan's Nippon TV.
The RSC described the production on its website:
"This enchanting coming-of-age story explores the magical fantasy world of childhood and the transformative power of imagination, as it follows one extraordinary summer in the lives of sisters Satsuki and Mei."
The original anime film My Neighbor Totoro is the story of two young sisters, Mei and Satsuki, who move to the countryside and encounter Totoro, wonderful creatures which only children can see.
