Grandchildren of Hiroshima, Hiroshima August 2015 RECENT VERNACULAR PROJECTS

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1 Grandchildren of Hiroshima, Hiroshima August 2015 RECENT VERNACULAR PROJECTS After Hiroshima, London, March 2016

2 Destroyer of worlds Sometimes you sit down in a show and, within about five minutes, you can tell it s going to be a bit of a weepy one. Your best bet is just to give in and start leaking it all out there and then, try to avoid a juddering, snorting emotion explosion. If you don t know anything about the work of London Bubble, they re an organisation that make community theatre with participants of all ages, backgrounds, and experiences. A sample cast might include actors aged 7 and 70, actors with disabilities, actors learning English for the very first time, all alongside classically trained singers and retired teachers who can command a room with nothing but an intake of breath. They often make work about London s history: projects that investigate the changing dynamic of areas like Docklands, with interviews and testimonies from people who have witnessed those changes as they happened. Tonight s show was called After Hiroshima, and was marketed as an exploration of Londoners reactions to the atomic bombings that ended the war with Japan in August It was deeply and personally political, big and small Ps. In an hour, they covered: the story of the officers visiting Hiroshima a month after the bombings; the first tests in the Pacific; the discovery of radiation sickness and its media cover-up; 1950s B-movies; the formation of CND; the discovery of Strontium 90 in milk; which of our homes would survive a blast; which of our loved ones would be left alive; marches and sit-ins and police brutality; the church s blessing of Britain s first nuclear missile programme; the priest who objected to it; Japan s pacifist constitution; the folding of 1000 paper cranes. The soldier who visited a POW camp church service and cried, uninterrupted, for fifty minutes. The illegitimacy of indiscriminate warfare. Trident, and the number of hospitals we could build (and staff) if we didn t have it. The varying strengths of Bubble s performers means lines are short and pass quickly between the cast. They make every word count, and the show bounces along, with images created out of nothing for only seconds at a time. Some of these are no-brainers, such as the line of men in radiation suits who must turn their backs on the detonation, but some are ingenious, the kind of ideas that would stand out on a pro stage. Those white radiation suits were removed and balled up on the floor, before becoming injured birds found within a blast radius, their necks wrung on military orders. I don t want to privilege After Hiroshima purely for its inclusivity, nor for its weighty subject matter, a particular interest of mine; I want to acknowledge its success in telling an important story with care and rigour. (Gimme another few hours and I ll manage to say all this without weeping.) Megan Vaughan 12 March 2016

3 After Hiroshima, London, March 2016 Audience feedback This project has enhanced my life enormously. I have made some great new friends whom I continue to socialise with. We all link in with each other and go to various other music events. I will be joining an adult drama class at the Bubble too, with some other members of the Hiroshima choir. I can also use what I have learnt vocally in my local community choir. I would like to be involved in future Bubble projects. a mix of actors from different backgrounds made me think a lot about the different countries involved in the tragic events depicted and I loved the involvement of so many people of different abilities and Love total community engagement.

4 Reflecting on Grandchildren of Hiroshima At one moment in London Bubble s play, Grandchildren of Hiroshima, the eleven-year-old actor Kaishu Kittaka stands watching the slightly older actors enact a scene of an eye test, where Akito Kono, a survivor of the atomic bombing, explained how he had avoided conscription by feigning poor vision. We had just seen Kaishu, voice recorder in hand, ask the question So Akito San, what happened then? and a voice over of Akito himself explaining the story. Kaishu, lit up in a bright spotlight, becomes the focus for the audience, as he watches the story unfold on the rest of the stage. We witness the child watching the story of an elder survivor, so that while the story itself is important, what appears equally significant is the relation between the young interviewer and the storyteller. The performance, thus, simultaneously presents the story of a young child watching the narrative unfold, alongside the tale itself. I mention this moment because for me it is indicative of the success of this production and one of its most moving and powerful aspects. Grandchildren of Hiroshima managed to stage the stories of a number of Atomic bomb survivors, and how the attack on their city on August 6th 1945 destroyed young lives and radically transformed their community. It did this with a series of interwoven accounts of the time before the bombing, the effects of the actual bomb and the life immediately after. We see a series of devastating yet simple scenes of loss, of daily struggle to survive and gradual repair. However, for me it was the relations between elders and children that were presented on stage that were key to its overall impact. If one of the central questions that is implicit in the 70th anniversary year of the bombing is how is the legacy of the bombing maintained as the last survivors become increasingly elderly, the play seemed to stage a very poignant response. Young people listening to elders, hearing their stories, and recreating them in forms that are understandable to their generation offers a glimpse of a future maintenance and respect for the Hiroshima narrative. London Bubble s intergenerational theatre beautifully staged the stories of Atomic survivors and children reflecting on those stories, suggesting that it is in the creation of relations between elders and younger generations that an opportunity to ensure that the legacy of August 1945 will continue to be respected. While the play shows young people loosing parents and siblings, families in despair at their loss, and parents grasping their children as they try and make sense of the effect of the bomb, the play is also optimistic in modelling powerful relationships between young creators, youth actors and elder actors. The performance had young and old on stage, telling the story of children collecting the stories of people who were children at the time of the Atomic attack. When a woman searched urgently for her dead son ignoring the painful cries of her surviving daughter we see relations made fragile by the bombing. When a puppet perhaps symbolising a dead child is gently cradled, we are presented with relations gradually repairing in the weeks and months after the bomb. And finally, when we see Kaishu and other young actors holding their voice recorders, we see new relations created as a powerful response to the problems of continued commemoration. The process of creating this piece of intergenerational theatre is crucially incorporated into its presentation and thus it becomes indicative of the power of future relations between elder and younger people as an ethical response to the terrible legacy of the Atomic bomb. James Thompson Professor of Applied and Social Theatre/Associate VP for Social Responsibility, University of Manchester

5 Grandchildren of Hiroshima, Hiroshima, August 2015 Participant feedback We read transcripts of Hibakusha interviews, then created images based on them - making still pictures (like statues) using our bodies, still pictures coming to life, telling the story using sounds, reenacting the story as we read the transcript. Meeting everyone at this workshop felt like a prize, for I had difficult twenties but lived through those ten years not beaten by the pain. The power, voice, presence, ideas of young people/children. I spent everyday looking forward to seeing everyone.

6 A view from the rehearsal room The audience is absolutely central to any work we do in theatre which is how I come to find myself sitting in rehearsals at London Bubble. If you want to discover how important an audience is visit a company where the audience and the actor are one and the same and that is very clearly the case at London Bubble. I am an actor turned director fascinated by the relationship between the actor and the audience. My current work is looking at how to improve that relationship to keep performances alive and playful and keep the audience involved. I have long known about London Bubble but having lived most of my time up North I ve never been able to see their work. So I wanted to take this opportunity to see firsthand what they actually do and how. Firstly, I was impressed by how relaxed the rehearsals are. I visited at the cooking stage as Jonathan calls it, rehearsals proper. Obviously a lot of the preparation work has already been done, research carried out, information gathered and selected and a draft script made. It is clear Jonathan and his team have ideas and pictures that they want to explore, set pieces to throw out to the group, encouraging them play with, build on then put into the mix. The result of this relaxed working is an incredibly rapid coming together of the show. A pace I found impressive. However, it is the participants themselves that strike me most. The group are incredibly focussed. They take each task and explore it, quickly, with imagination and playfulness. There is very little energy wasted, very few distractions, just a concentration on the job in hand. They demonstrate an impressive discipline. However, that doesn t mean it is dull and serious, the group find the joy in the act of creating; the actual making of theatre is itself the social and pleasurable activity. They are doing it because they want too. A professional actor can have many agendas which can sometimes get in the way of the making work, that doesn t feel the case here. What makes for an exciting and productive rehearsal room is bravery, simply taking a task, committing to it, giving it a 100% and seeing what comes out. Only then can you get an idea if something has potential. That is happening with abundance at London Bubble. I have been in too many rehearsals that plod along half-heartedly with too few ideas being offered. However in just two sessions I see a steady stream of ideas being thrown into the mix and a constant collaborative building of the piece. I spend a lot of time encouraging actors to offer something, anything, to go back and offer something else, play and play again, surprise and challenge themselves, not to get stuck on the first or second idea they have but to be brave and push further, the London Bubble actors did just that. A number of them will come up with another option each time it is played it keeps it fresh and alive for them as well as for those watching. It is impressive how some of the actors run a section once, then the next time do it without the script. They may only be small lines or sections, but they set themselves the challenge to play without the safety net of a script, to see what they can invent.

7 However, what is most notable is the generosity and support the group has for one another and for the project itself. It feels like a room devoid of ego and utterly focussed on developing a piece by themselves, for one another to be eventually given away to the wider London Bubble community. And that is something very refreshing to see in a rehearsal room. Chris Hallam, Theatre director Chris visited the HDV rehearsals in January 2015 Hopelessly Devoted, London, March 2015 Audience feedback Up to usual Bubble standard of well-worked out participatory theatre. Likely to make young people think again about their vote and its importance. I was struck by the vivid depiction of the limited electorate over the years: using cards so the audience represented actual people who would be entitled/not entitled to vote. I also liked the representation - using men's ties - of how things went up and down.