It’s 80 years since American atomic bombs were dropped on two Japanese cities. As I write this, a new US President will be taking their seat in the White House. And in early April we will be bringing my play THE MISTAKE, about the terrifying dangers of nuclear weapons, to the USA.
We will be touring there for six weeks from the start of April, and it’s an expensive undertaking, though in order to help the tour proceed, I have chosen once again to be unpaid myself.
Potential sympathetic funding bodies in the UK won’t fund a project that goes abroad and I hesitated to reach out to friends and supporters one more time, but I’m going to do so – and ask if you can help us get the play to the USA, to share the urgent themes and message of the play with a wider, American, audience? Join us in our efforts to enlighten, to illuminate, to change hearts and minds, through the emotional power of theatrical storytelling?
Any donation however small will make a difference. Or even just sharing the appeal with anyone you think might be able to help. Here’s the Crowdfunding link for donations which gives a lot more information.
NEWS…we’ll be taking off to the U.S. in April for a short tour of my play THE MISTAKE, in the 80th anniversary year of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The U.S. spring dates will culminate in a three week run off-Broadway, New York City, April 24th-May 11th – just when, by coincidence, the next session of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty discussions will be taking place in the city.
Photo by SIMON RICHARDSON
Performing THE MISTAKE in the States fills me with a certain trepidation…but excitement too. The play is a corrective to the OPPENHEIMER film blockbuster, which failed to reference the Japanese experience on the ground at all. Whereas Riko Nakazono in THE MISTAKE, portraying an atomic bomb survivor searching for her parents, brings the full magnitude of the catastrophe home to audiences. (In Edinburgh and in London, Emiko Ishii brilliantly created the role.) I will be reprising my roles as the maverick Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard and the pilot of the Enola Gay, Colonel Paul Tibbets. Money and funding are an issue as ever – so I will probably reach out with one more crowdfunding appeal in the New Year…
Photo of RIKO NAKAZONO in THE MISTAKE by SIMON RICHARDSON
‘The whole way I am oppressed by the thought that all the damage I see was done in one instant by one bomb.’ Father Wilhelm in THE PRIEST’S TALE.
I’m giving two more performances of this piece in early November. Based on an account in John Hersey’s brilliant book ‘Hiroshima’, it’s the compelling story of a German priest who survived the first atomic bomb.
Since time immemorial wars have always resulted in the deaths of countless innocent civilians – and made so many children orphans. The photo is of three orphaned brothers in the aftermath of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. And as I write this, somewhere in the world more children are being orphaned as a result of the terrible conflicts that are currently raging. When is it going to stop? All this senseless violence?
(Photo – Joe O’Donnell, courtesy of Kimiko Sakai)
This week I will be giving three more performances of The Priest’s Tale, in Harringay and Wandsworth, London and in Huddersfield. A mere drop in the ocean towards peace – these modest artistic offerings. But I will offer them and continue to offer them regardless of how futile it may sometimes seem. In Harringay on Wednesday, I am performing at the church of the London Catholic Worker. They are a community of the international Catholic Worker movement, a radical Christian movement dedicated to community, hospitality, and resistance. They run Giuseppe Conlon House in Harringay, a house of hospitality providing accommodation and support to homeless and destitute male asylum seekers and other migrants with no recourse to public funds. They also engage in nonviolent activism for peace, justice and planet. They believe that the ‘works of mercy’ – feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, welcoming the stranger or migrant – are opposed to the works of war. They have no paid staff, receive no money from the government, and are dependent on donations to continue their work. Tickets for Wednesday’s performance are free and all donations on the night will go to towards their work, with a proportion going to CND. https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-priests-tale-tickets-951987047887?aff=oddtdtcreator
Huge thanks to all those who came along (or joined online) to watch our Evening Remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It was an honour to have peace poet Antony Owen come down from Coventry to join us and make such a powerful contribution to the evening, and to have Chihiro Ono playing her violin so poignantly and beautifully. We managed to raise some money for CND, who supported the event, and Sands Films, our hosts, were as brilliantly supportive as ever. The event is online until the end of this month… https://watch.eventive.org/sandsmusic/play/667d3dd0d48cb0003a979c53/667d3dd0d48cb0003a979c56
Very excited to update the news on the event I’ve planned for August 8th – Remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki… (live and livestreamed from Sands Films Studios, London SE16 4HZ). Myself and Japanese violinist Chihiro Ono will be joined by ANTONY OWEN, peace poet, reading from and talking about his work.
Described by Joseph Horgan as “the bravest British poet of his generation,” Antony Owen, from Coventry, is one of the leading writers of war and peace poetry active today. His collection The Nagasaki Elder was shortlisted for the coveted Ted Hughes Award and his work is taught at regular poetry workshops in Hiroshima. This event is supported by CND, with all donations being shared by Sands Films and CND. It will be available for a while afterwards online. Register here: https://sandsmusic.eventive.org/schedule/667d39806749e300a686d8c1
Thursday August 8th – 7.30pm (live and also livestreamed) Sands Films Studios, Rotherhithe, London SE16 4HZ
THE PRIEST’S TALE – with Michael Mears and violinist Chihiro Ono
The riveting story of a miraculous suitcase, a daring escape and the devastation wreaked on a city in one instant by one bomb…
Newly revised and staged for live performance, THE PRIEST’S TALE by actor/playwright Michael Mears is his adaptation of one of the atomic-bomb survivors’ accounts from John Hersey’s remarkable book HIROSHIMA.
Father Wilhelm was a German Jesuit priest living in Hiroshima, who survived the blast but witnessed much of the destruction. THE PRIEST’S TALE is a clear-eyed depiction of the pity of war…and of the terror wrought at the start of our nuclear age…told with compassion, warmth and flashes of humour…
Live musical accompaniment will be provided by London-based Japanese violinist CHIHIRO ONO. After the 1 hour (approx.) performance there will be a Q and A and a guest speaker – details tbc.
Although I’ve never actually been to Hiroshima (yet), I feel as though I have, through all my reading and research for my play THE MISTAKE. But yesterday I was fortunate enough to get to meet two hibakusha – survivors of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 – to meet them here in London at an event organised by CND. They were here with the Japan Peace Boat, travelling the world to share their testimonies.
The lady pictured with me is Toshiko Tanaka, a quietly inspiring woman, who was injured in the blast in Hiroshima, but survived, and despite various bomb-related illnesses over the years, is still here to tell her story.
The other survivor we heard from was Tadayoshi Ogawa, an 80-year-old gentlemen who was a baby when the bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, and again, despite various health issues is still here.
I later learnt that in recent years, Toshiko, who still lives in Hiroshima, has welcomed into her home the grandson of President Truman (the man who ordered the bombs to be dropped) and the grandson of one of the crew of the Enola Gay¸the B-29 bomber that delivered the bomb. Such an inspiring woman – she is peace, forgiveness and reconciliation embodied. May she live for many more years to tell her story. Next year, when I very much hope to take THE MISTAKE to the USA and to Japan, I hope to visit her in her home in Hiroshima…
Early days, but I am beginning to put out feelers to various contacts in the USA and Japan to see whether we can take my play THE MISTAKE to venues in both countries. I also hope to set up a few more UK performances, and there’s possible interest from one or two places in Germany. Anyone reading this that has any other thoughts on possible locations and venues, I’d be glad to hear them (via the contact page on this website). More news as plans develop…
EMIKO ISHII in THE MISTAKE
RIKO NAKAZONO in THE MISTAKE (photo by Simon Richardson)
MICHAEL MEARS in THE MISTAKE (photo by Simon Richardson)
October 5th. After I’ve spontaneously performed ‘The Priest’s Tale’ for an audience that had been expecting ‘The Mistake’, Kelly and I pack everything away and make our way over to the Head’s house, where…we’re relieved to find Riko, back from hospital, sitting in the cosy living room, seeming fine, in need of a little rest certainly, but telling us the doctor wasn’t overly concerned apparently. Fingers crossed that normal (or near to normal) service will be resumed in York, loveliest of cities, on Saturday night.
Indeed it is. Riko performs brilliantly to our sold-out house, then we all relax, having a couple of days off here, a chance to rest, recuperate, and explore the Shambles, the Minster, the city walls and York’s many other delights.
Tuesday morning we’re up bright and early to perform in York’s Bootham School. At 10.15am, we’re perched high up on the school stage waiting for the imminent arrival of almost 300 pupils, ages ranging from 12 to 18, who will sit in serried ranks below us.
When the lights go down, there is a huge roar from them all. Then silence. For 45 minutes. Then an interval. (The only one we ever have, a special request from this particular school). Then more silence for the remaining 35 minutes of the play. Then, as the lights fade to black-out, another huge roar. Of relief, I wonder?
At the Q and A, and at lunch too, it’s clear that the older students were engaged and got a lot from the play, but that the 12 and 13 year-olds were just too young. One student of Chinese heritage challenges me both in the Q and A and in the workshop we take after lunch, that I don’t mention in the play the sufferings inflicted by the Japanese Army on Chinese civilians in Manchuria. I respond by saying that I do briefly reference (in the voice of the Pilot, General Tibbets) atrocities committed by the Japanese in WW2. But the Chinese student is persistent, speaking with real feeling about how the Japanese weren’t just innocent victims. Feeling rather chastened, I apologise to him for not having more knowledge about this aspect of the war, and I promise to try and become better informed.
(I remind myself that it was in Yorkshire at Ackworth School six years earlier, that two students from Nigeria and Ukraine asked me equally hard questions about pacifism and conscientious objection.)
Before we leave York, I receive the melancholy news that our two performances at Royal and Derngate in Northampton in a couple of weeks’ time have to be cancelled due to the current crumbling concrete concerns (or RAAC) that have come to light in many buildings round the country. This is a blow for their theatre – and also for us, as it’s too late to book anywhere else at such short notice, so we’ll just have a couple of extra days off instead.
We leave Yorkshire for the west Midlands where next day we have another daytime performance, a matinee, at the Bewdley Festival – playing the Baptist Church, where I also performed my last play in 2017. A huge wooden cross is suspended over the ‘stage’ which is not going to seem appropriate at all, and which will also be in the way of our mobile blackboard. Luckily it can be temporarily unscrewed, taken down and put to one side.
This is our first performance to adults since the terrible atrocities a few days earlier, on October 7th, of the attack by Hamas in Israel. With this news still reverberating in the air, the play feels electric… so many lines and incidents in the play resonate with heightened intensity – the cursing of the enemy, the cycles of hatred and the deaths of innocent children. I feel very moved by the whole event today – as do the audience.
The following evening we are just 25 miles away at the Midlands Arts Centre, in the delightful Hexagon Theatre, and with its dusky brown, or almost dark gold, wood panelling, its hexagon shape and steeply raked auditorium, it resembles a lecture theatre. Apparently it is indeed hired for such a purpose on various occasions. But tonight it hosts THE MISTAKE – a play in which a large blackboard features prominently, on which highly intelligent scientists of the calibre of Leo Szilard and Robert Oppenheimer (oh and that other chap, what’s his name? Albert wotsit…) scrawl incredibly complex equations and theories, so yes, this feels like an appropriate setting in which to perform the play.
The house is fairly full, but one seat is conspicuously empty, a space for someone in a wheelchair – a lady who is coming with her companion, or rather, is supposed to be coming, but now, at 7.35pm, five minutes after we should have started, is nowhere to be seen. Should we begin without her, we wonder? But then if she and her companion do arrive, it won’t be straightforward getting them into the theatre, across the stage with our props and into her reserved space, without something of a hiatus in the fast-moving action of the play.
But just outside in the foyer the whirring of a lift can be heard, and a few moments later the lady in the wheelchair appears along with her companion, who wheels her over to her space. The auditorium doors are finally closed, I glance up at Kelly our stage manager, indicating that I’m ready to begin, when just to my left the lady in the wheelchair asks in a very loud voice, ‘Is it too late to get a glass of wine?’
In my career I’ve played numerous waiters, perhaps most notably in the film Four Weddings and A Funeral, when I ask Hugh and Andie (well, their characters) what they’d like to drink. I feel myself regressing through the decades, about to approach the lady in the wheelchair and announce to her, ‘Of course it’s not too late, madam. Red, white or rose?’
Fortunately I don’t do this, and fortunately she doesn’t pursue the idea, and the play begins, the golden wood-panelling reflecting the lights beautifully, the blackboard loaded down with its equations behaving itself perfectly.
Week 7 sees us head north again – to Buxton in the glorious Peak District.
But no, we’re not performing on the stage of Buxton Opera House, but on a tiny corner stage in the delightful Green Man Gallery, which can just about seat 60 people in and amongst the many paintings on display.
Our accommodation for two nights is in the charming Cottage Of Content, a cottage which is 17th century in parts, and where, thanks to our lovely hosts, we feel very content indeed.
On to east Anglia, but Storm Babet is brewing, hitting various parts of the country. We perform at Diss Corn Hall, then drive for an hour after the show to get to the coast and our next location, Aldeburgh, as the rain begins to make itself felt.
I’m so looking forward to performing at the historic Jubilee Hall, where Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears and many others have performed, but I’m counting my chickens…
Next morning the weather is diabolical and at 12 noon, just two hours before we’re due to go in and set up, the venue manager phones me to say that due to the conditions and travel advice and blocked roads and local flooding, he’s going to have to cancel – as our audience probably wouldn’t be able to get to the Hall. That’s if they dared to venture out at all.
That melancholy feeling again. Another unexpected day off.
So next morning we leave Aldeburgh having had fish and chips, a blustery walk along the front (the weather a little calmer now) but no performance, and head to Bury St Edmunds Quaker Meeting House and a packed audience – minus the few who can’t get in because there’s still flooding in those parts.
Next day it’s back to London, where at the end of the week we will return to where we started rehearsing – the magical Sands Films Studios for two nights, playing to packed houses with both performances live-streamed and recorded.
This time it’s not Ed Sheeran (or his lookalike) who is spotted in the audience. A friend texts me afterwards, asking, ‘Mark Rylance??!! Was that Mark Rylance in the audience?’
‘Yup,’ I can confidently reply, ‘it was. I invited him.’
But I’m thrilled he’s actually able to make it. And that he stays for the Q and A.
We’ve had two excellent shows here and we all feel this should be the natural end of the tour. But it isn’t quite…
A weekend off, then it’s down to Canterbury for the actual final performance of the tour – involving a drive through the MOST torrential rainstorm I have ever driven in. Will it never end, will it never end, I mutter to myself, as the windscreen wipers feebly try to beat away the deluge.
After an excellent show and another very passionate Q and A, I go to stay with my friends at Herne Bay. Next morning, all is peaceful. Blue skies, a calm sea…I inhale and exhale long deep breaths…
Then I drive back into Canterbury where Riko, Kelly and myself have a final farewell brunch before heading back to London and our own beds.
I drop Kelly off in Wimbledon and leave the van for two minutes to help her in with her suitcase, returning to find…a warden giving me a ticket! No!
I can’t believe it. The very last moments of the tour and I’m getting a ticket? I try to reason with him about the heaviness of Kelly’s suitcase, that I was only away for a minute or so, but he is insistent.
Yet again I feel a wave of melancholy. What a way to end the tour. I just stand there watching him, then say, with genuine feeling, ‘I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.’
This seems to stop him in his tracks. I’m not confronting him, not showing any aggression but simply expressing genuine repentance.
He takes a deep breath, puffing himself up for a moment with a little brief authority, then says, ‘Alright. I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to let you off on this occasion – but don’t EVER do it again.’
‘No, officer, I won’t.’
‘You or someone else should have stayed with the vehicle.’
‘Yes, officer, of course, officer. Thank you, officer.’
Phew.
My feared parking fine when we were in Stratford never materialised and now this…hoorah! I’ve managed to complete the tour with no scratches on the vehicle and no parking tickets. Mr. Warden drives off on his motorbike leaving me to return the van and that, my friends, is that.
What a tour. So many miles, in all weathers, playing every type of venue (apart from an Opera House) and with such responsive audiences. Wonderful hosts, enthusiastic organisers and super-helpful and friendly technical crews. No Arts Council grant. But a wave of generous support from crowd-funders, supporters and chums, without whom the tour would have been exceedingly difficult to pull off.
So. A deeply rewarding experience. Yes. Worth all the effort it took me putting it all together. But now… my bed awaits me.
Because not to put too fine a point on it, I am totally knackered.
Thus, my long slow return to everyday reality begins…until the next time that is… (watch this space)
Michael Mears 