Tag Archives: travel

Japan Chapter 5: A Japanese Boy’s Response to The Mistake …

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Before we reach Hiroshima – the city that I feel I’ve lived in for much of the last decade, but a city that I’ve never actually visited – we have two other destinations.  In my case, Nara and Tottori.

It was hard to fill every week of this month-long tour with performances, so we now have two spare days before travelling to Tottori City in western Japan where we have been invited to perform at the Bird Theatre Festival. Riko spends the two days visiting her family in Osaka; Maria stays with family in Tokyo, whereas I have been thinking of revisiting Kyoto – which I last saw twenty five years ago on my only previous visit to Japan, with the Young Vic Theatre Company when we were performing Hamlet.

But Maria nudges me towards Nara, the ancient capital of Japan.  ‘If you like temples and shrines, you’ll find some beautiful ones there.’  So that’s what I do – head south on the Shinkansen bullet-train to Nara for two days.

‘On your way to the temples, watch out for the deer,’ Riko advises me.  ‘They’re everywhere and if you’re not careful they’ll eat your food.’

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Japan Chapter 4: An English Tea Party…

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‘I think it would have been good if you’d written something in the play about Okinawa and explored that…’. ‘I think it would have improved the play if there had been more history about the Japanese incursions into China…’

These comments from history students at Rugby School in Tokyo, who came to the theatre on Wednesday 17th September to see The Mistake. 

Yes, but… had I done the above, the play would be much longer and far less dramatic. The drama students from the school, however, were greatly taken with the staging, the simple props used in numerous ways, the character transitions, the swift switches in time and place – and all the students agreed that just two people telling such a powerful story in this way was, as one student kept reiterating: 

‘Admirable.  Really admirable.’

We were excited to have performed to two international schools but, as someone from the British Council in Japan said, after watching the play, ‘This really ought to be seen in Japanese schools.’  Yes, we’d love the opportunity to do that, but how? 

I need to find someone in Japan who could set up such performances…

We’d now worked seven days non-stop and so all needed a day off.  

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Japan Chapter 3: An American In Tokyo

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So, it’s been an eventful few days – but all in a good way.  Well, apart from the ‘stuck up a cul-de-sac for half an hour in a huge taxi’ incident.  (Did that not make the World Service news?) 

On Sunday afternoon we had our second performance of The Mistake for a much quieter and more solemn audience than the previous day.

This was followed by our first Japanese Q and A with the help of an interpreter. Some really interesting and absorbing questions, one person wondering why we hadn’t given Shigeko, the 1945 atomic-bomb survivor, a Hiroshima accent?  Good point!  In fact, the highly skilled translator of our bilingual script, Yojiro Ichikawa, had asked me initially, ‘Shall I use Hiroshima dialect for Shigeko?’ and I’d said, no – thinking that that might be one extra challenge too many for Riko to take on.  But the audience member now went on to say, that having Shigeko played in Japanese without a dialect made her somehow more universal, someone we could all identify with. Interesting.  

As in many other Q and A’s, I am asked what gave me the idea for the play – and so I recount my story of reading two interviews in the Guardian newspaper twenty three years ago (the yellowing copy of which I still have and show to the audience), an interview with the pilot and an interview with a survivor – and how I began to wonder whether that might work dramatically…if the descendant of a survivor sought out the pilot in his old age to ask him some tough questions… and thus the seeds of The Mistake were sown.

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Japan Chapter 2: The Real Devil Is War

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‘I’m So Grateful…’ ‘We’re So Grateful…’

Those words are ringing in my ears as I walk back to my tiny apartment in the balmy Tokyo evening, after our first ever bilingual performance of The Mistake – indeed, our first ever performance of the play in Japan.  ‘This play – so important.’  ‘Very important, this play you have written.’ 

‘In Japan we feel that only Japanese can understand all the feelings around the atomic bomb.  But your play shows that a western person has understood those feelings and understands what the people in Hiroshima suffered.’  

This is all incredibly humbling, as you can imagine, but also a real affirmation of what I hoped for in bringing this play to Japan. 

Hang on, I’ve skipped a few days.  

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Japan Chapter 1: I Bought These Cream-Puffs from the Neighbourhood Bakery

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Ohaiyo gozaimas!  Monday morning, September 8th.  My alarm goes off at 4.55 a.m.  This was the first night in quite a while that I didn’t drop straight off to sleep.  I lay awake, trying to relax, counting sheep, doing deep breathing exercises, you name it,  but to no avail.  Well, this was the eve of a long-planned trip to Japan with my play about Hiroshima, ‘The Mistake’.  Who could be calm with that prospect ahead?  

I’ve been trying to learn some basic Japanese for the last six weeks – not easy – but it’s been really useful – and actually a lot of fun.  I can now say ‘of course’, ‘good idea’ and ‘if it’s alright with you’, along with many other useful phrases and words.  But will I be able to have a conversation in Japanese? – not a cat in hell’s chance.  However, I am very much looking forward to using one of the most pointless phrases given to me on the online course I’ve been following – yes, you guessed… ‘I bought these cream puffs at the neighbourhood bakery.’  

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With the Quakers in upstate New York

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April 18th.  You learn something new every day.  Today I learned that ‘Nazi Democrats are all low-lifes’.  This was painted on a large board outside someone’s  house on a quiet country road near Old Chatham in upstate New York.  Joseph, our host and prime organiser for our two performances in the area on Good Friday and Easter Saturday (would anyone come? I wondered.  Wouldn’t they all be on their Easter break, with family, or away visiting relatives?)…anyway, Joseph was driving us in his pickup truck (another story) to Patrick, a friend of his who, over time, has been a dancer, actor and is also a playwright – who happens to have also written a play about Hiroshima – something he’s been working on and a subject he’s been obsessed with for far longer even than myself.  Since the age of ten, he tells us.  (He’s now in his early seventies.)

Out of the truck window I see an elderly couple – who look so sweet and charming – walking up the hill past the sign.  ‘Joseph! Are they a couple of Nazi Democrats, by any chance?’

He chuckles. 

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Performing in Amish Country – (but not for the Amish).

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We leave South Bend and Notre Dame University and on Monday morning (April 14th) head for Chicago Airport – where we will fly east with all our bags and baggage.  

First class on the internal United Airlines flight is only marginally more expensive than a regular ticket – so I treat the three of us to a little more legroom (plus superior snacks) on the two hour journey and for the first – and probably last – time in my life, I sit in seat 1A: first on and first off.  A small treat for me after all the stresses and strains of dealing with my three large cases – one personal and two for the play.  

We’re met at Harrisburg Airport by the wonderful H.A. Penner, my host here previously in 2018, and Lydia, both of whom help us with our luggage into the van they’ve commandeered for three days.  We head to Lancaster County, our base for two performances in two churches – and the heart of Amish and conservative Mennonite country.  

Our hosts are Mennonites too, but they are progressive, liberal ones, with no qualms whatsoever about using cars, cellphones or electricity.  

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The Man Who Sets The Hands of the Doomsday Clock

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So far on this tour, I’ve felt butterflies, goosebumps and now shivers down the spine.

Let me explain.  You can spend so much time in emails and phone calls and Zooms – as I have, trying to pin down a particular venue for The Mistake in different parts of the US – and then all that effort comes to nothing.  On the other hand, you can shoot off one speculative email – as I did just one month before leaving for the US – which was way too late – and get an immediate positive response and booking.  Such was Chicago.  

I had tried for months to get a performance in the Windy City to no avail. Various very promising options fell through late on – after I’d (perhaps foolishly) booked flights and Airbnbs.  But that last minute speculative email of mine was to the Chair of the Department of Physics at the University of Chicago, Peter Littlewood – to which he responded that, yes, they’d love to host us on one of the dates we were in Chicago, in the Physics Department Lecture Theatre.  I was beyond thrilled at the news.  

So…Day 7 – after treating us to a fabulous breakfast at a lovely coffeehouse in downtown sleepy Manchester, Katy and Libby waved us off with our many suitcases and we began the three hour trip back to Chicago: Manny once again at the wheel of his voluminous (it needed to be) Lincoln Navigator.  We were headed straight to the University of Chicago to set up and prepare for a 6 pm performance.  We didn’t have much time to be ‘tourists’ but we managed a quick look around.  

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