In the Theatre of a Two-Headed Calf's production of Drum of the Waves of Horikawa, Jess Barbagallo plays the curiously named Eesogay Yougayman, bedecked in a flowing black coat, a wig fit for Ziggy Stardust, and a badgerlike streak of black makeup across her face. The live music falls somewhere between the rhythmic, repetitive structures of kabuki and the more chaotic yet just as percussive style of punk rock, allowing Yougayman (implied to be a traditionally male character) to strut and plunge with violent swagger. She stalks the stage and falls to her knees before the object of her affection, Otane, played by Heidi Shreck, who wears a blood-red kimono and combat boots. Yougayman stares lasciviously into the audience, describing how she abandoned her studies as a samurai to see Otane: “My sickness was a ruse and yet not entirely so, for I was suffering from the malady called love. And you were the cause, Otane!” An exaggerated, almost parodic struggle ensues, in which Otane is caught by Yougayman, whose tongue wags in rhapsodic anticipation of the sexual conquest she is about to force upon Otane as the music and guttural “huhs” from the musicians heighten to a rough, almost unbearable climax.