The Bit:
Museum Tour:
The audience is taken in groups of ten into a hall way or a lobby of the theatre. They are led by a captain usher or uniformed person into the room or hall way where there is displayed an exhibit of text and printed pictures the theme of which is the U.S. Government’s internment of the Japanese American during WWII, where 120,000 people of Japanese decent where forced from their homes and put in concentration camps as a measure of security against espionage. Maps are displayed that show the location of the camps and assembly centers. Photographs are displayed that show the conditions and the people that had to live under them. The documentation of the camps By Dorthea Lange and War Relocation Authority propaganda films is compared for their disparate perspectives: Lange’s work for its compassion and the propaganda for its justification and paradox. A video of interviews with various experts, poets and survivors is playing in the exhibit. The Haiku of former internees is displayed graphically and next to it is displayed the text of Executive Order 9066. An explanation of haiku aesthetics accompanies the haiku poems. Certain phrases are highlighted in E. O. 9066 and quotes from Lynn Theissmeyer’ Article “the Discourse of Violence” comment on the rhetoric showing collusion and justification. A portion of the images is explaining the images in the performance, the geographical location where they were taken and some statistics about the subject matter.
Tour Guide:
Welcome to the performance of Dedokoro. The title means “prisoner set free” in Japanese. The word could be also used to mean “point of departure.” This performance you are about to see in a few minutes is a point of departure for a discussion about the injustice of unlawful detainment and the violence it unleashes on its victims.
Let us begin with the ways this period was represented. Dorthea Lange was known for her work as a portrait photographer when she was hired to photograph immigrants and poor intenerates during the depression. Her own humble background gave her the compassion to represent the subjects of her photographs as humanly as possible. This attitude is apparent in her photographs of the Japanese American Relocation. The War Relocation authority impounded many of these photos and supplied the public with a different story that paradoxically depicted the Japanese American internees as both model citizen and enemy aliens. The paradoxical statements in Executive Order 9066 have striking parallels to the propaganda films the War Relocation authority
Our performance tonight hopes to start discussion about this unfortunate event in history so we can pay attention to when it might be happening again. Let us continue on and I’ll lead you now to the back stage where the actors are preparing for tonight’s performance. You’ll get a chance to meet the cast and ask questions after the performance so let us pass through the dressing room quietly. An usher will meet you in the theatre.
The audience will arrive in the theater space to see in the middle of the stage a diorama of an internment camp that is built to scale to match a projected image of an aerial view of the Heart Mountain, Wyoming internment camp circa 1942, projected from above on the diorama. The diorama is on a large ground cloth under which are actors laying on their side blending into the scene. The shapes of their bodies suggesting mountains that lay to the east and west of the camp.
The audience is seated and the house lights dim.
The Text:
Sailing on the same ship
The son
a U. S. soldier
His father
A prisoner of war
The Media:
The Projection Screens:
Dramaturgical Links: