Play #10, Day #1
Last night at the first rehearsal for Yohen, our tenth show, playwright Philip Kan Gotanda described the play as “a love story that acknowledges that love and living in the real world are really really hard.”
First rehearsal is like a potluck of ideas.
Set designer Lee Keenan talked about the play’s setting in Southern California, in one of the neighborhoods where the military mass-settled Japanese/African-American postwar couples. Lee said he grew up around so many children of these unions that he didn’t think about the difficulties they must have had. (In the play, James recalls his father warning “baby’s gonna have both your troubles and then some…”) One of Lee’s research images shows a row of houses all alike, except that one yard is lushly green, while the neighbor’s yard is wilted brown. He talked about the details of Sumi and James’ house and its history-that a spot on the carpet would show where the TV USED to be.
Gardenia Street
Lighting designer Becca Barrett described lighting inspirations in terms of the moods of Sumi and James’ longterm relationship: the fire of intimacy v. the cooler deeper waters of the unspoken.
Carol Blanchard envisioned the clothes of two people working to express who they are, 40 years after the postwar American 1940s, when they had to wipe clean their stories to fit in. In the case of this couple, they’re moving in opposite directions, and Carol’s costume sketches express this in colors.
Meanwhile, Galen Pejeau has a particularly exciting props task on this production, since he gets to develop Sumi’s artistic vision through the pots she “makes” throughout the play. He’s working with Japanese-inspired potters in the Bloomington area to get original pieces.
- And dramaturg Lavina Jadhwani posted some fascinating images of “war brides” and Black GIs in Japan. She also recommends the following, for those looking for some educational end-of-summer reading:
Tsuchino: My Japanese War Bride by Michael J. Forrester
Michi’s Memories:The Story of a Japanese War Bride by Keiko Tamura
An Absent Presence: Japanese Americans in Postwar American Culture by Caroline Chung Simpson
Sayonara by James A. Michener
“I don’t think any play changes the world,” Philip said, “but I do believe a good play can make you feel and think deeply… and enlarge the world we live in.”