Friends House event inspires pacifist play
Michael Mears has been inspired to re-stage 'The Priest's Tale'
A Friends House summer event featuring two atomic bomb survivors inspired the playwright and actor Michael Mears to revive a pacifist play.
The Friends House event on 5 June featured Toshiko Tanaka and Tadayoshi Ogawa, who represent some of the last living ‘hibakusha’. The term refers to the 11,000 remaining survivors of the 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Michael Mears told the Friend that his encounter with the two elderly atomic bomb survivors was his main motivation for reviving and re-staging the play. ‘Despite all my research I had never actually met any survivors.’
The Priest’s Tale tells the story of a German priest who survived the first atomic bomb. ‘CND asked me to perform something at this event, so I did a short twenty-minute extract from the play – and it had such an impact on the two atomic bomb survivors that I felt moved to revisit the full piece, stage it and offer it to live audiences.’
Some Quaker Meeting houses have hosted The Priest’s Tale this month, including Huddersfield, and Wandsworth, with Chester following on 27 September. ‘It’s sort of an open offer to any Meeting house that is interested in having it,’ Michael Mears told the Friend. ‘I am performing it completely for free, so host venues can raise donations for their own needs, or a charity of their choosing. I only ask that a portion of any donations go to CND.’
