This is a new work by Chiori Miyagawa, who has had numerous plays produced Off-Broadway, including 1995’s America Dreaming, which starred Billy Crudup. Directed by Jean Wagner, I Have Been to Hiroshima Mon Amour also has three top actors: Joel de la Fuerte (Reuben Morales on Law & Order: SVU), Obie-winning Juliana Francis-Kelly (a veteran of many Richard Foreman plays, and one of downtown’s finest performers) and Sue Jean Kim. The full-length one-act revolves around the memories of two love stories; one concerns a Japanese soldier in WW II whose lover was killed instantly by the A-bomb dropped on Hiroshima, 8-16-1945, and the other is about the same man and a French actress, set in the “restored” Hiroshima in 1959. Hiroshima Mon Amour is an award-winning French film made by Marguerite Duras in 1959. I spoke with the playwright.
Hello, Chiori. How did this play come about?
It’s my play, but it’s a collaboration with Jean Wagner, the director. She brought me the screenplay two and a half years ago and asked me if I would be interested in collaborating on a project. When I watched the movie I had a very different reaction to it than what I imagined Jean had. I was annoyed by it because it’s about a French actress shooting a movie about peace in Hiroshima in 1959.
I’ve seen the movie, but it was a long time ago.
She falls in love with a Japanese man, an architect. But the entire movie is about what she suffers during WW II in France. The man is not the main character in the screenplay. However, he was born in Hiroshima, and he was fighting the war when the bomb dropped; but none of his memories are in the screenplay. It’s very much self-indulgent to the French point of view. I felt like Hiroshima was used as a prop, and I wanted to write my rebuttal.
Where does your play happen?
I set it in a real place, not a movie set, to give it a Japanese perspective. And I give the Japanese man the missing memories. He gets to tell his story. The Japanese woman, his first love, comes back as a spirit, or ghost, and she tells her perspective, her reality of what an A-bomb can do to a human being.
This is something most of us can’t imagine.
I wanted to do it in a bigger picture because the effects of the A-bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were censored by the U.S. government for over 30 years. It has practically disappeared from our consciousness. We know they were dropped, but as to the true horror, the American public is not aware. These victims of the Holocaust are not given their rightful place in history, and are always on the edge of being forgotten. So when Jean Wagner brought me the screenplay –- a love story -– I thought it was a perfect opportunity for me to tell about the bombings, through another love story, a Japanese love story.
We wanted to create something very beautiful with our production design, original music and choreography, but with no reproduction of the gruesome truth. It’s all woven into the love story. It’s not an education piece, it’s a theatrical experience. We wanted to tell the deep sadness of the survivors, through something that is theatrically beautiful. We were interested in the contradiction between tragedy and beauty.
How does it play out on stage?
The love stories blend into each other, so some of the first love is played in memory, and that memory intersects with his current affair with the French woman. In terms of the staging, the ghost of the first love is always present, even though he’s involved with the French woman.
Ohio Theater, 66 Wooster St., (212) 868-4444. Previews May 8, opens May 13. Wed.- Sun., 7:30 p.m. $18/$15.
