Dedokoro
Intoduction
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.
Audio: Acoustic guitar bowed suggesting the chugging of a train’s engine and the train’s whistle alternating between the two sounds.
From 1 a long train of luggage attached in a line twenty pieces long and rolling, glides in toward 2. It is powered by an actor crawling on their hands and knees inside a large steamer trunk in the front of the train. The train makes a gentle circle around the perimeter of the diorama of the camp and stops up center.
A Citizen:
(Actor appears on the mezzanine in a spot light. He is dressed in khakis, a white shirt, and black jacket. He is also wearing a fedora)
While the MP’s wait
You fill my suit case
And spill your tears.
How Heavy its weight.
Sojin Takei
∞
The actors under the ground cloth slowly start to rise. When they get to their feet they slowly walk in a circle dragging the ground cloth with them, diorama and all making a heap of cloth in the center of the stage. An actor, also draped comes in from down left carrying a long pole- bringing it on stage and with the others slowly maneuvering their bodies to recreate the iconic image of the marines raising the flag at Iwo Jima. As the group brings the flagpole into position the image of a ship is projected on the flag.
The Father:
(Actor appears on the mezzanine in a spot light. He is dressed in khakis and a white shirt sleeves rolled)
Sailing on the same ship
The son,
A U. S. soldier;
His father,
A prisoner of war.
The group of actors in the middle of the stage holding the flag rearranges them selves: The dancer nearest to the end of the pole takes it from the rest of the group and lays it on the stage slowly along the 2/4 axis, the dancers in the center work to bundle the ground cloth and model up into their hands. The original flag bearer wraps his cover cloth around him achieving a more middle eastern style and then as the others move off to 1, carrying the ground cloth and model while the flag bearer take up the flag finally and bears it across his shoulders like a water carrier and exits out 1.
∞
A barrack rolls on to stage from 1. The barrack is eight foot long and looks like a to scale model of the barrack typical of the internment camps- black tar paper and baton. The barrack has small windows and two doors in the middle of each side. There are three or four windows on each side -when it arrives center stage the three actors that are seated inside put their hands out the windows one hand per window and begin to make the unconscious hand gestures we all make when talking to others. It is as if the gestures are from people having a conversation the audience cannot hear. A priest enters from 3 and six more actors walk in a procession two by two from 1 flanking the barrack they hold on to the hands and rotate the barracks like they are pall bearers of a sort. And the priest reads the haiku:
Priest:
In the sage brush
Two new earth mounds
Torrid wind blows
The six dancers rotate the barrack 45˚before they pull it off stage at 2, like they are holding the hands of small children as they walk. The priest follows.
∞
Draped figure with a long length of rope tied around his waist pulling an actor standing on the other end of the rope enters from 3 as a similarly draped actor enters from 2 pulling another actor standing on the rope he tied around his waist. The pulled actors have trays with a cup and a plate tied around their necks like cigar girls from old time movies. They mime the experience of eating at a mess hall in a prison. As they are dragged past each other they suddenly move in to real time movement and their actions speed up. As they are pulled apart their actions return to a slow motion that suggests that time and motion happen at a different pace in different areas of the stage. One of the draped figures says:
As if to relish each step
I walk this great earth
-to the mess hall
the only walk allowed
∞
Four dancers enter carrying folding chairs and place them in a line about 5 feet apart. They look at a point up and to the left. Each of them salutes one of the four salutes of the cub scouts, the military and the pledge of allegiance, as well as a gesture of holding the index finger to the side of the nose and raising an eyebrow in a take to the audience which is my choice that indicates a salute of some secret society. After a three count the four sit in unison then proceed to slide out of their chairs like bored children. When their heads reach the edge of the chair they reach up and flip the folding chair over them selves and stand behind the chair. Each cycle of this action covers about five feet of ground and the actions of look, salute, sit, slide, flip, and stand is repeated until the four of them have reached the other side of the stage.
∞
An actor enters from 2 with a block a board and a saw. He places the block down, stands on the board he places on the block, and saws on the board slowly cutting the board in two. Another actor enters from 2 with an axe and takes a few whacks at an invisible target with the axe. Then two more actors come in from 2 and grab the axe man with two hands, one on each wrist and forearm. They begin to tug the axe man back and forth as if his arms were a two-man saw and the tree was his body. They pull and step in time 1234. 1234. Stepping on 4 clockwise along a wide circular path around the saw man in the center when the saw team completes the circle the “tree” falls. As the two person saw team pulls the tree off stage by its limbs, the saw man pulls a bow out of his costume and proceeds to play a dirge for the tree bowing on his saw. At the end of the musical saw number the saw player says:
Saw Player:
Cutting bare trees
the only work to be done
in the forest
Saw Player exits out 3 removing the block and the sawed wood.
∞
From all four corners 12 actors enter the stage and group in threes. The trios each take a position in front of a different section of audience. There are four modes of action to this sequence that reflect the images of a game show, a debate, a cafeteria scene and a sermon. The game show section brings out the contestants and the central host figure who is all smiles through appropriate hand gestures silently introduces each of the contestants on his/her right and left. The contestants are congenial but a bit pensive. The host makes the first move and with broad gestures conveys the sense that a theme is established that he wants the contestant on his left to comment on. By copying the gesture and the producing a variation on the gesture the contestant conveys a statement. The host gives the new gesture to the other contestant and the conversation or debate continues with this pattern of action for a few beats. The action changes into the next mode, which is a cafeteria scene. The host becomes the server and the contestants become the people trying to get their food. The Server is strangely robotic. And the bit becomes an attempt to time the movement of placing a plate cup or bowl under the automatic invisible ladle of the server in order to catch whatever it is that he serves. After a few attempts to catch the food being slopped out by the server the third mode of action begins which is a routine that is vaguely reminiscent of a cheerleading squad. The actors stand in a line facing the audience and create one symmetrical shape -the two actors on the outside mirror each other and the actor in the center chooses body shapes that are bilaterally symmetrical. After the trio creates two or three shapes the next mode of action is undertaken by the actors: The sermon. The sermon is conducted with hand gestures indicating a book and god. The Priest delivers a few short phrases with the other two mimicking the boldest gestures before the priest moves counterclockwise to face the audience between 1and 4 with the other two flanking as before and the whole cycle is repeated for each section of the audience.
∞
Female actor wheels a bassinette on stage from 2. She is followed by three men carrying long bamboo poles. The woman presents the bundle of fabric to the audience as if it is a precious baby. There is a look of glee given to the audience by all four actors in unison. The pole bearers lift the tips of their poles that are tied to the fabric by monofilament. The fabric unfolds in front of the woman and it reflects her body to a certain extent. The image is intended to convey a sense of the spirit that we both chase after and project. The pole bearers change the shape of the fabric to follow the movements of the woman in that if she raises her right hand the pole bearer to the woman’s right raises the fabric to reflect the woman’s gesture. She walks in a serpentine path off stage toward 4 and raises both hands before exiting. The veil lifts above her head and she walks under it turns back toward stage and says:
I see the faces
of my sleeping children
as I am arrested
and taken away
into the cold wet night
All exit out 4
THE END