(The Mistake tour 2023)

Dartington, a most beautiful place, with ancient trees, grade II listed gardens, set amidst green rolling Devonshire hills – what a place to start our tour of THE MISTAKE – three days rehearsing and then performing in such lovely countryside.

Of course, the countryside is full of other things too…insects, wasps, spiders…

Myself and our director Ros were staying a few miles away with good friends.  But my colleagues Riko and Kelly were staying in what used to be student accommodation, on site, with all of Dartington’s wonderful facilities on their doorstep.  And with huge shady trees and shrubs   towering over their dorm block.

Nothing is perfect, is it?  There’s a Buddhist word for this concept, I believe.  For example, you’re having a glorious summer’s picnic by a gently meandering river but a very persistent wasp will not leave you (or your cream tea) alone.

Thus Riko and Kelly’s first night was ruined by the many spiders they found lurking in their rooms, spiders which at times seemed to be practising for the sprint finals in the Arachnid Olympics.

So, an upgrade to some very swanky rooms was given to them for that first night with a promise that the rooms in the dorm block would be deep-cleaned and dusted.  But being in the countryside and with autumn coming on, you’re never going to get rid of spiders completely.

(1500 year-old yew at Dartington)

Michael Sells and his producing team at Dartington are incredibly supportive to us and we get to rehearse in the performance space for 2 days before we open – which is so helpful.  It’s a big space and the play has more room ‘to breathe’ than previously when we were in Edinburgh (in a tiny space on the first floor of the Hilton Hotel) and in London’s Arcola Theatre (where there was more space but not as much as here in Studio 1).

We spend the 2 days in very profitable rehearsals and lunching al fresco at the lovely Green Table café with all its locally sourced ingredients.  Friday the 8^th is the day of our ‘opening night’.

‘Any sign of spiders?’ I ask the others.

‘Yeah, there are still plenty, but we’ve just had to resign ourselves to it.’

Kelly then says that she read somewhere that we swallow around 500 spiders in a lifetime. 

What?! we chorus.  Where did you read that?

‘I can’t remember exactly.’

I say to her that I can’t recall ever having eaten or swallowed a spider either awake or in my sleep.

‘In your sleep?’ she asks.  ‘How would you know.?’

Hmm, she has a point.

The grounds here are so beautiful and in the grade II listed gardens are many stunning trees including the fabled ‘Twelve Apostles’ – 12 ancient yew trees.  I can’t wait to see them – but when I get there I’m greeted by what look like twelve tree stumps.  They’ve all been given a serious hair-cut (or whatever the correct horticultural term is…pollarded?), the subject of much debate amongst some of the locals we talk to.  Nothing is perfect.

But Friday 8^th sees Riko Nakazono give her first public performance in THE MISTAKE and she rises to the occasion magnificently.  A good-sized audience is gripped throughout and a number of them stay for our Q and A.  One elderly gent starts to weep as he tells everyone of his visit to Hiroshima and its Peace Museum a few years back – how profoundly it had affected him, and how tonight the play had brought all those memories back. 

The utter inhumanity of those ‘weapons of mass destruction’.

A Japanese lady dressed in traditional Japanese clothing is in the audience and hands us each of my team a small ‘good luck’ card – two faces can be seen in it – the female clears away all obstacles, the lady tells us, and the male rakes in good fortune.  She hopes this will happen for us on the tour.  I do too.  Obstacles surmounted, and good fortune greeting us.

On the journey back to London, I ask Kelly again about the spiders and ask her to look it up on Google.

‘Ah, here it is – it says that we swallow about 8 spiders a year.’

Oh, well, when put like that it sounds more credible.

Then I ask her to read out the whole thing.

‘There is a myth that says-’

MYTH!  Stop right there!  A myth.  Exactly!

I hereby declare to all and sundry that I have never (knowingly) eaten a spider in all of my 6 decades to date.

‘Doesn’t mean that it won’t happen on this tour though,’ Kelly mutters, under her breath. 

The tour is now underway – with our next stop being Chester, then Caernarfon, Aberystwyth and Lincolnshire…

May we have good fortune, few obstacles and not too many spidery encounters…

(THE MISTAKE tour 2023)

So I’m strolling over Waterloo Bridge, it’s not quite sunset yet, this is back in early May, strolling with my great friend Marcia, hugely talented director, playwright and sometime actor.  She lives in Canada, has dual nationality, her mother still lives in London and Marcia is back to visit her.  ‘How is the tour shaping up?’ she asks me.  ‘Oh, it’s all coming together well, my only headache is that I’m having trouble finding a stage manager.’  Marcia thinks for a moment, asks me what the tour dates are, then says, ‘I may have the perfect person for you.’  ‘What, you know some UK stage managers?’  ‘No, this one is Canadian.’  ‘Well, how’s that going to work?’ I ask. ‘She’s coming to the UK on a 2-year visa in just a few weeks and will be looking for theatre work.  She also wants to explore the country – so your tour could be ideal.’ 

‘Can she drive,’ I ask? 

‘Yes.’

But on the wrong side of the road, I think to myself. 

I later learn that Kelly, for that is her name, can also only drive automatic.  That’s the favoured choice in north America.  So I will need to source and hire an automatic van – not so easy to come by. 

But I do, and Kelly arrives in the UK, and is absolutely up for the job, stage managing on the tour of THE MISTAKE, knowing that into the bargain she will get to see York, Chester, Canterbury, Brighton, Chichester, Stratford-on-Avon and a host of other places, even if only fleetingly.  Then WHAM!  She contracts Covid in the second week of rehearsals – having avoided it all through the pandemic in Canada – and has to take the best part of two weeks off, meaning I have to fall back into temporary stage management duties, as well as acting, writing, organising, hiring vans, you name it…

But rehearsals continue apace – in the splendid Sands Films Studios, Rotherhithe – and Kelly eventually returns to us, and meanwhile Riko Nakazono, my new-co-performer, has been getting her hugely challenging role under her belt, thanks to the expert guidance of our director Rosamunde Hutt, and with extra voice coaching from the brilliant Kate Godfrey, and before we know it, it’s Tuesday September 5^th…

Did you hear the one about the Canadian, the Japanese and the half-Italian, who set off round England and Wales for two months to perform a play about Hiroshima and the first atomic bomb?

No?  Well, it’s not a joke, it’s a reality…and first stop is Dartington in Devon, where THE MISTAKE tour opens on Friday Sept. 8^th… Watch this space for more news over the next few weeks…and I very much hope that news won’t include being pulled over by police for driving on the wrong side of the road… 

Photo of Riko Nakazono by SIMON RICHARDSON

‘I climbed Hijiyama Hill and looked down.  I saw that Hiroshima had disappeared.  What I felt then and still feel now I just can’t explain with words.  Of course I saw many dreadful scenes after that, but that experience, looking down and finding nothing left of Hiroshima was so shocking that I simply can’t express what I felt.  Hiroshima didn’t exist.  Hiroshima just didn’t exist.’ 

(Words of an atomic-bomb survivor, August 6th, 1945.) 

Remembering all those who died in Hiroshima on this day and in the weeks, months and years following.  Lest we forget…

Crowdfunding for THE MISTAKE link here

Listening to what quite a few friends and supporters have said and urged, I have decided to do a little crowdfunding for THE MISTAKE.   It takes a long time to set up a tour of a play – some of you will know this!  

I have worked long and hard to persuade 28 venues, including theatres, small arts centres, churches, Quaker Meeting Houses and schools to have a performance of the play this September and October.  

But it’s catch-22…without a tour pretty much in place, the Arts Council won’t look favourably on a grant application – ‘Where’s the evidence of demand?’ they will ask.  But if you do get a strong and varied tour set-up, which of course involves contracts and commitments, and then you are refused funding, as I was just last week, what do you do?  Cancel everything?  An option, of course – but a costly and unpleasant one.  

No, this tour goes ahead…and if you can help in any way, with however small a contribution, we’d be so grateful.  

If you can’t help, that’s fine too – but if you could share this appeal perhaps…that would be really useful.  

Thank you everyone!  More info at the link above.  

A photo set-up by photographer Simon Richardson of Riko Nakazono, who will be joining me for the autumn tour of THE MISTAKE, through September and October.  Heading off to Dartington, Chester, Caernarfon, Aberystwyth, Wickenby (Lincs.), Lancaster, Stratford-upon-Avon, Cardiff, Banbury, Walton-on-Thames, Chichester, Bristol, Hull, Cambridge, Brighton, Doncaster, Pontefract, York, Bewdley (W. Midlands), MAC Birmingham, Northampton, Buxton, Diss, Aldeburgh, Bury St. Edmunds, Canterbury and one or two other places tbc.  Phew!  Quite a tour to many and various corners of England and Wales.  You can find the dates, schedule and booking links here… https://michaelmears.org/dates-for-your-diary/ And we’d be so grateful if you can put the word out to any family or friends you have in or near any of the places we’re visiting.  Thank you! 

These three very special women have been and are part of the journey of THE MISTAKE from page to stage to tour and more – and all three were at the Arcola Theatre recently on the same night for a performance of the play. You-Ri Yamanaka, on the left, was a part of early workshopping of the play, took part in the film collage we made from the play in 2020, and then came to Edinburgh with me in November 2021 to give a first public reading of the play. Emiko Ishii, in the middle, performed in the first full production of the play last year at the Edinburgh Fringe and this year at the Arcola. And Riko Nakazono, on the right, will be performing in the play on its 2023 autumn tour to 28 venues around the UK, from Aberystwyth in west Wales to Aldeburgh on the east coast, from Brighton on the south coast to Lancaster in the north! It has been a privilege for me to meet and work and get to know these three very talented performers and I hope they will all continue in some way to be a part of THE MISTAKE in its future life. ‘Arigatou gozaimasu’ to them all!

The photo shows a small detail from the wonderful Hackney Peace Carnival Mural, just round the corner from the Arcola Theatre – where we will perform THE MISTAKE from April 18-22, at 7pm each evening, with a matinee on the 22nd at 3pm.

 ‘THE MISTAKE covers very difficult subject matter in a way that really engages the imagination and emotions and all with such intelligence’ (Audience feedback)  

‘A powerful examination of humanity in the wake of Hiroshima ★★★★’ (The List) 

‘The play is fast paced and yet detailed, lyrical when it needs to be, complex at other times.  It jumps place, time and characters seamlessly and is truly, all round, an exceptionally high-quality piece of writing.  All of that could be overlooked though if not in the hands of two expert actors. Luckily Mears himself, alongside Emiko Ishii prove just that – experts at their craft. Ishii is haunting as she recalls the diary entries left by Nomura Shigeko that give us deeply personal insight into the Hiroshima atrocities.’ (review from Theatre Travels. Org at the Edinburgh Fringe).    

Go to https://www.arcolatheatre.com/whats-on/ to book for The Mistake – or book for both The Mistake and WORTH (running in the main house there, from our friends New EarthTheatre) and get a discounted deal  – use the code WORTHMISTAKE.  Thank you!

‘BACK BY POPULAR DEMAND.’ Our production of my play THE MISTAKE, about Hiroshima and the first atomic bomb, is returning to the Arcola Theatre, Dalston, London, E8 3DL for one more week – April 18th – 22nd.
Performances are now at the earlier time of 7pm, (curtain down at 8.20pm approx.) with a Saturday matinee on the 22nd April at 3pm.
If you haven’t seen it yet, here’s your chance…
If you have already seen it, thank you.  But please feel free to see it again!  Or at any rate, feel free to phone a friend, mail a mate, or nudge a neighbour to get along and see it – we’d be hugely grateful!
Emiko Ishii will still be with me, giving her heart-stopping portrayal of atomic bomb survivor Shigeko…
And here are just a few of the audience feedback comments from the other week…
‘I will never forget this play.  Absolutely brilliant and so powerful.’ ‘A completely engrossing, moving and important play.’ ‘Thought-provoking, moving, overwhelming.’ ‘Exceeded all expectations.  Absolutely riveting.’ ‘Brilliant performance.  It has made me urgently need to know ever more about these events. Loved the use of props, especially the airplane scene.’
Thank you, as ever, for your support.

https://www.arcolatheatre.com/whats-on/

As followers of my website will know, I finally premiered my Covid-delayed new play THE MISTAKE, about Hiroshima and the first atomic bomb, at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe this summer.  Now, in the new year, we are going to be performing it in London for a short run.

From Tues. Jan. 31st to Sat. Feb. 4th, Emiko Ishii and I will perform THE MISTAKE, directed by Ros Hutt, at the ARCOLA THEATRE, Dalston.    24 Ashwin Street, London, E8 3DL.    8pm each evening. There will be a matinee performance as well on Sat. 4th, at 4pm and a Q and A on Thursday 2nd Feb. after the performance. (With Kate Hudson, CND chair, taking part.)

If you’re stuck for present ideas…why not treat friends or family to a ticket?  Maybe not ‘the perfect Christmas pressie’, but certainly a stimulating, thought-provoking evening in the theatre…

★★★★    ‘The past comes alive – a gripping piece of storytelling’ (THE TIMES)

Tickets went on sale today here…
 https://www.arcolatheatre.com/whats-on/the-mistake/

Thank you as ever for your support and for spreading the word where you can…

Just to remind you, here is a brief description of the play…

1942.  On an abandoned squash court, a dazzling scientific experiment takes place that three years later will destroy a city and change the world forever.  Two actors, one British, one Japanese, explore the events surrounding the catastrophic ‘mistake’ that launched our nuclear age.

Interweaving the stories of a young woman in war-time Hiroshima, a brilliant Hungarian scientist, and the American pilot who flew the plane that dropped the bomb, THE MISTAKE is a powerful drama that confronts the dangers that arise when humans dare to unlock the awesome power of nature.

An urgent new play about Hiroshima and the first atomic bomb.                                    

The dropping of the first atomic bomb is referred to on the Peace Memorial in Hiroshima as “the mistake”. Michael Mears’ compelling and profoundly moving new play, directed by Rosamunde Hutt, explores personal stories surrounding that catastrophic event.

 ★★★★    ‘The past comes alive – a gripping piece of storytelling’ (THE TIMES)

 ★★★★★    ‘I was genuinely blown away by this production.  It received one of                    the very few standing ovations I have seen at the Edinburgh. (UK THEATRE WEB)

 ★★★★   ‘A powerful examination of humanity in the wake of Hiroshima.’  (THE LIST)

 ★★★★    ‘An evocative, well-researched and urgently fascinating story.’ (SCOTSMAN)

We are looking to perform THE MISTAKE in theatre venues and studio-type spaces – but can also consider non-theatre venues where space permits.  A minimum performing area of approximately 5m x 3m would be required.   

Currently we have pencilled bookings or strong expressions of interest from venues in: Salisbury, Canterbury, Walton-on-Thames, Northampton, Stratford-upon-Avon, Bewdley, Diss, York, Hull, Cardiff, Aberystwyth, Caernarfon and Peebles.

We want the play to move and enlighten audiences and to encourage them to think deeply about the questions raised.  The response from people to the play’s opening run in Edinburgh 2022 confirmed this.  For example:

‘An important story told beautifully. We were gripped, moved and enlightened.’  Elaine Russell. 

‘Even though I already knew a bit about the Hiroshima bombing, I learned a great deal more from the play. It is not only enlightening but also deeply moving.’  Mary LaFrance.

‘Superbly acted by two immensely talented actors about an historical but totally topical event.     It brought tears to my eyes – a ‘must see’ play where the use of limited props is ingenious.’     Chris Elliott.

The play is suitable for audiences of 15+ years.  It will appeal to anyone interested in history, politics, science, ethics, morality and peace studies.  We also want to perform to school and college students wherever possible. 

FOR MORE INFO PLEASE CONTACT:  thehalfitalian@aol.com   michaelmears.org                     

WINNER – of a CAROL TAMBOR INCENTIVE AWARD – EDINBURGH FRINGE 2022

WINNER – of a SPIRIT OF THE FRINGE AWARD – EDINBURGH FRINGE 2022

SHORTLISTED – for the SIT-UP AWARDS for plays making a social impact – EDINBURGH FRINGE 2022

LONGLISTED – for the BBC WRITERS’ ROOM Popcorn Awards for new writing EDINBURGH FRINGE 2022