Play to mark Hiroshima wins award
'The world of Japan is initially domestic and traditional, with the sense of everyday life; and then there’s the other world of mechanisation, experiments and military.'
The Quaker actor and playwright Michael Mears has won an award for his play based on the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.
The Mistake was one of ten plays to receive the Carol Tambor Incentive Award before its first public performance. The New York-based fund was designed to encourage new writing and live performance at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, where The Mistake will show this month. The play is set in an abandoned squash court in 1942, where a ‘dazzling scientific experiment’ takes place that three years later will destroy a city. The story is told through the lives of a Hungarian scientist, a US pilot, and a Japanese civilian.
Winchmore Hill Quaker Mark Friend, who designed the set, told the Friend that the actors Michael Mears and Emiko Ishii play several people over different periods. ‘That really impacts the design,’ he said. ‘The two overriding locations are Japan and America, and there are two kinds of worlds or moods. The world of Japan is initially domestic and traditional, with the sense of everyday life; and then there’s the other world of mechanisation, experiments and military. All the objects and clothes are carefully chosen to conjure this up.’
Creating a set that can tour from church hall to theatre space can be particularly thought-provoking, he indicated. ‘The main element is a blackboard that pivots so that at any one time it can show different things. Sometimes it is actually a blackboard, with equations and experiments written across it. At other times, it shows pictures of Japan. There are all sorts of ingenious objects that become other things – such as a ladder or a case. You know that you’re succeeding when you put the objects together and it looks like one world. If something slightly jars, you haven’t got it right.’
The Mistake was staged in Wandsworth Meeting House and Rotherhithe last week, and will show at The Space at North Bridge in Edinburgh from 5 August.
The winners of the award received £10,000 (US$13,000) between them, chosen by the Carol Tambor Theatrical Foundation.
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