E.O. 9066 @ The Marsh

I must apologize, before I talk about my review, I have to give a little background first. For those who don’t know what E.O. 9066 stands for, is «Executive Order 9066», which was a Presidential order signed by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt during World War II which basically sent ethnic groups to internment camps. (This bill was directed mainly to people located primarily on the west coast of California and the southern Arizona to be relocated to interment camps.) 110,000 Japanese were held in these camps fore the duration of the war and more then 62% were Nesei (2^nd generation Japanese Americans) but were all moved out of fear that some were spies for the Japan Empire and communicating with submarines off the west coast. During this forced relocation, each person without knowing where they were going was only allow to take what would fit in a suitcase.
This story is about a mother, her two children, the time that they spent in Camp Topaz in Utah, and the events which followed.
Without giving away the full plot of this production, I will now give my review. This play as I mentioned earlier, was done in complete silence, and characters in this play are puppets, but in this case the two brothers were made of tea cups and a napkin, and the mother was made up of cloth, a tea kettle and bamboo towel holder. The puppeteers were fully blacked out and masked, and while you could see them, they weren’t the focus, the pieces that they were controlling were.) skillfully and gracefully manipulating these inanimate objects giving them life, without the use of words and more importantly they were successfully able to convey their emotions which at times pulled your heart. The reason why they chose to use these common household items to make the puppets, was that earlier when I talked about how they could only take what personal items they owned, which could fit into a single suitcase, all other possessions were left behind.
From scene to scene I continually amazed by the seamless and fluid transitions of the objects and pieces. The coordination and cooperative control between these puppeteers was something to note of as well, some of the simple characters required two puppeteers and other more intricate characters required more. In general, I was pleased with the writing done by Christine Young and Liebe Wetzel and I felt that they accurately conveyed the stories that many Japanese Americans that were interned faced. I know this because my grandparents were interned at a camp over in Tanforan, (which is now a shopping center not to far from South San Francisco.) I’ve talked to them and heard their accounts.
The theater was a small cozy little space, but was very appropriate for the this production, where the audience felt as though we were sitting around to a story someone was telling us, the audience was very diverse ethnically, but still they way they responded in unison with laughs and groans, you could tell everyone understood what was going on… I brought my grandparents with me to see this this past weekend, both of them were interned, and initially I was concerned if this would bring up painful memories for them, but when the house lights came up and we walked out, the first thing they told me was that they were glad they came, they were glad people are still remembering this, and hopefully by keeping the people aware it will keep us from making similar mistakes in the future. I do not want to digress further on a tangent on modern day politics that this conversation went on to, but to cut it short and sweet, the last show will be next Saturday, ⁴⁄₂₅ and I strongly suggest you go and see it, before it closes!