Sonically, Jen Shyu’s Nine Doors encompasses Taiwanese folk songs, European art song, Indonesian gamelan, North American jazz, and two distinct strains of Korean music: the bardic, long-form poetry of pansori, and shamanic ritual sounds from the country’s east coast. Theatrically, it includes dramatic monologues, a traditional Indonesian temple dance, gorgeous projected images, four languages, two goddesses, and a simple but effective stage set. And at its heart there’s a tragedy: the 2014 death, in a car accident, of Shyu’s friend and artistic collaborator Sri Joko Raharjo—an acclaimed young composer and dalang, or shadow-puppet master—along with his wife and their infant son. But for all the grief embedded in Nine Doors, the lost potential and unmade art, there’s also a warm and simple message here: stop and smell the roses.

The chrysanthemums, dahlias, and lilies, too—or whatever flowers were on Itaru Sasaki’s table the day Shyu met him as part of her research process. Sasaki, a resident of Japan’s Iwate Prefecture, is known for having installed an old-school telephone booth in his hillside garden following the death of his beloved cousin. The “Phone of the Wind” is intended to be a meditative space where the bereaved can talk to their dead, and has so far hosted over 10,000 mourners. Having heard of Sasaki and his work, Shyu decided to visit following a Japanese concert appearance—and what she found was not exactly what she’d expected.

Sasaki was initially formal, even distant, Shyu explains in a telephone interview from her Brooklyn home. But once the two discovered their mutual love of jazz, he opened up. “We spent three or four hours just talking, and I asked him if there was any wisdom that he had about life,” she says. “And he said, ‘You know, just take in the good things.’ And he pointed to the flowers, these beautiful flowers on the table, and said, ‘See this flower? This is a really good thing. So just spend time with the good things—good food, good flowers, good people.’ ”

After that, Shyu was left alone with the phone. “I just talked,” she says. “I talked to Joko, to my auntie who had passed away from cancer, to [her poet friend] Edward Cheng, who also passed away from cancer. And it was so odd, because… You know, it was almost an anticlimax. Of course, being with the phone and experiencing that was powerful, but the important thing was the connection that I’d made with Mr. Sasaki and his wife.”

That story, she adds, “kind of ties the show together”. And so while Nine Doors is rich and complex and strange, it’s also about the basic human impulse to connect. What began as a kind of protective ritual for Raharjo’s young daughter Nala, who survived the crash, has turned into a more general kind of blessing, in which we’re all invited to mourn and celebrate our own dead.

“I’m going to ask everyone to think about someone they’ve lost, or someone who they miss,” Shyu says. “At one performance, in Connecticut, a woman came up to me afterwards and told me that her brother had died in a car accident just a year ago. And she said it [Nine Doors] was just such a powerful experience for her, because she could enjoy the music and the performance—like, it was a thing of beauty for her—but she could still mourn for her brother in a very direct way.

“It was very healing for her,” Shyu adds. “And all I could say was ‘Oh, my god. Thank you.’ ”

Jen Shyu performs Nine Doors at the Western Front on Friday (October 19).