In 1955, a group of 25 women disfigured by the nuclear blast at Hiroshima visited the United States to undergo reconstructive surgery. Their bizarre odyssey climaxed on the television program This Is Your Life in a face-to-face meeting with Enola Gay pilot Robert Lewis.
In Hiroshima Maiden, performance artist Dan Hurlin recreates this stranger-than-fiction tale through a combination of Japanese Bunraku-style puppetry and dance. The show, which premiered in New York last year, will make its St. Louis debut at 8 p.m. April 22-23 as part of the Edison Theatre OVATIONS! Series.
Hurlin first learned of the Hiroshima maidens from David Serlin, a friend and medical historian who had written about them for his then-forthcoming book Replaceable You: Engineering the Body in Postwar America (2004). In 2001, Hurlin traveled to Hiroshima and interviewed one of the women, Michiko Yamaoka, who had been 15 at the time of the blast. Now an activist associated with the Hiroshima Peace Museum, Yamaoka agreed to allow Hurlin to base Hiroshima Maiden on her story.
During that 1955 tour — undertaken to help pay for medical expenses — the Hiroshima maidens became minor celebrities in the United States, even recording a pop song. Yet Hurlin points out that, in public appearances, they were only seen in silhouette because of a State Department blackout of images of survivors, which wasn’t lifted until 1964.
(He was struck to find that the Museum of Television and Broadcasting archives lacked a copy of the Hiroshima maiden episode of This Is Your Life — a consequence, he speculates, of the blackout.)
Hurlin, who is not so much a puppeteer as a theater artist working in the medium of puppetry, noted that Hiroshima Maiden incorporates a number of elements from Bunraku — a classical Japanese form dating to the 17th century — as well as his own narrative devices. The cast includes nine puppeteers, a narrator (or tayu, in Bunraku parlance) and a cellist (standing in for the traditional shamisen player).
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Panel to explore aftermath of Hiroshima The Edison Theatre OVATIONS! Series and the Center for the Study of Ethics and Human Values will present a panel discussion titled “Examining the Hiroshima Maiden: Exploring the Historical, Cultural and Ethical Issues” from 7-9 p.m. April 20 in the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum’s Steinberg Auditorium. The talk is being held in conjunction with performances of Dan Hurlin’s play Hiroshima Maiden, which will come to Edison Theatre April 22-23. The talk is being held in conjunction with performances of Dan Hurlin’s play Hiroshima Maiden, which will come to Edison Theatre April 22-23. Panelists will include Barbara A. Baumgartner, Ph.D., associate director of the Women and Gender Studies Program in Arts & Sciences; Anna A. Kuang, M.D., assistant professor of surgery in the School of Medicine’s Department of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery; Rebecca J. Lester, Ph.D., assistant professor of anthropology in Arts & Sciences; and Lori Watt, Ph.D., assistant professor of history in Arts & Sciences. Also in attendance will be medical historian David Serlin, author of Replaceable You: Engineering the Body in Postwar America (2004). Serlin’s book includes a chapter about the Hiroshima maidens and was a principal source for the play. The discussion is free and open to the public and will be followed by a reception and viewing of the museum’s exhibition Inside Out Loud: Women’s Health in Contemporary Art. Both the discussion and the performances are funded in part by a grant from The Women’s Society of Washington University, the Regional Arts Commission, the Missouri Arts Council and the Heartland Arts Fund, a program of the Mid-America Arts Alliance and the National Endowment for the Arts. For more information, call 935-9358. — Liam Otten |
Hurlin designed and created the puppets after traveling to Japan and studying with master Bunraku puppeteers. The original score — which won a 2004 Village Voice Obie Award — is by composer Robert Een. (Ironically, Hurlin’s first meeting with Een occurred Sept. 11, 2001, in New York’s East Village.)
Edison Theatre is presenting Hiroshima Maiden in conjunction with the exhibition Inside Out Loud: Women’s Health in Contemporary Art, on view through April 24 at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, part of the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts.
In all, more than 30 campus and community partners will join with the Kemper Art Museum throughout the spring to present close to 70 events relating to women’s health. For more information, call 935-4523.
Hurlin has been creating puppet theater since 1980. Previous works include the Bessie Award-winning Every Day Uses for Sight Nos. 3 & 7 (2001) and The Day the Ketchup Turned Blue (1997), a 12-minute toy theater piece.
From 1980-1993, he was the artistic director of Andy’s Summer Playhouse in Wilton, N.H., a program that facilitates creative collaborations between children ages 8-18 and internationally acclaimed artists.
In 1990, Hurlin received an Obie Award for his solo adaptation of Nathanael West’s A Cool Million. In 1998, his set for his chamber opera The Shoulder was nominated for an American Theatre Wing Design Award. Other works include The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1985); The New Hampshire Duets (1987); The Jazz Section (1988); Archaeology (1989); Constance and Ferdinand (1991); Quintland (1992); and NO (thing so powerful as) TRUTH (1995).
This production is funded in part by a grant from The Women’s Society of Washington University, the Regional Arts Commission, the Missouri Arts Council and the Heartland Arts Fund, a program of the Mid-America Arts Alliance and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Tickets are $28; $24 seniors and WUSTL faculty and staff; and $18 for students and children. Tickets are available at the Edison Theatre Box Office and through all Metro-Tix outlets.
For more information, call 935-6543.