I Have Been to Hiroshima Mon Amour (2009)

by Chiori Miyagawa
Directed by Jean Wagner

production_hiroshima_01

Co-production with Voice and Vision
Hiroshima Project at Ohio Theater

Go to web site of Hiroshima Project

Chiori Miyagawa’s impressionistic three-person play has as its baseline a cultural critique of the 1959 Alain Resnais film “Hiroshima Mon Amour,” which viewed Japan’s tragedy through distinctly French eyes. Did Resnais romanticize the atomic bomb, or underrepresent its victims? More important, the play asks: Who are any of us in the long shadow of Hiroshima? In scenes that delicately muddy time and identity, shifting from 1945 to 1959 and occasionally to present day, Miyagawa contemplates the paradox of remembering a city that—surreally, horrifyingly—one day ceased to exist. The play is the centerpiece of the Hiroshima Project, which includes readings of mid-century plays by Japanese writers. -The New Yorker

…where Marguerite Duras’s screenplay ultimately dwells on the actress recounting in flashbacks her youthful affair with a German soldier during the Nazi occupation of her hometown, Nevers, for which she had her head shaved and was locked in a cellar, Ms. Miyagawa’s stage version keeps its focus on the devastation of the Japanese city. -The New York Times

Read the feature article about Hiroshima Project in The New York Times.

Selected Reviews

GALLERY

Photography by Carol Rosegg

About the production

Premiered in NYC in May 2009, Miyagawa’s play follows two simultaneous love stories: One during WWII in Hiroshima, played out in memory; and the other in 1959, in ‘reconstructed’ Hiroshima. In this poetic rebuttal to the French film, Hiroshima Mon Amour, the play focuses on memories that belong to the Japanese.

Production Credits

Written by Chiori Miyagawa
Directed by Jean Wagner
Performed by Joel de la Fuente, Juliana Francis-Kelly & Sue Jean Kim
& Voiceover in Japanese by Brian Nishii
Lighting: Rick Martin
Music & Sound: Du Yun
Projection Design: Hap Tivey
Sets: Glenn Reed
Costumes: Liz Prince
Choreography/Education director: Hillary Spector
Producer: Karen Grenke
Assistant Director: Rachael Hayes
Stage Manager: Sunneva Stapleton
Assistant Stage Manager: Adam Goldman
Assistant to the Producer: Lacy Post
Press Representative: Sam Rudy Media Relations
May 8-30, 2009

I Have Been to Hiroshima Mon Amour is made possible in part with public/and private funds from Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Asian American Arts Alliance, Off-Broadway Angels, The Dramatist Guild Fund, Puffin Foundation, Nancy/Quinn Fund ART/NY for Crossing Jamaica Avenue, and Japan Foundation and Department of Cultural Affairs for Voice & Vision.