"The First Light"
A New Musical About
War and the Nuclear Age
 |
Artwork by James Jereb |
 "Takashi!",
the white light called. "Don't be afraid. It is time to leave."
I did not want to leave my father, but in a blink of an eye I was being
carried by a white crane above Hiroshima. I saw seasons turn from spring
to summer to fall over our seven hills and seven rivers. When winter came,
everything was dead. Nothing moved; not a single sound.
Suddenly a
flash of all consuming light, followed by a deafening sound as if all
things had been sucked up into huge roar. An immense ball of fire flew
across the sky wrapping around the white crane. I held onto its legs,
but I was only eight years old and it slipped away. Alone, sitting on
a boulder, I cried and cried. Then a swirling of monarch butterflies
covered the sky. In the lead was a beautiful white butterfly. "Takashi!
Always remember to stay true to yourself", came the same voice as
the crane, now a butterfly. As it fluttered before me, music as I have
never heard before filled my body.
Then I woke up. The next day, the bomb . . .
-based on the true vision of Takashi Tanemori, atom bomb survivor.
THE FIRST
LIGHT is a theatrical work-in-progress that originally emerged out of
"The First Light Pilgrimage for a Nuclear Free Planet" undertaken
by San Francisco-based performing artists with Takashi Tanemori in the
summer of 1999. Using metaphor, music, dance, drama, ritual, storytelling,
and vintage film footage, it tells the story of the entire nuclear era,
from its beginnings in the 1940's until now, using a three-tiered approach
- the personal, the historical, and the mythical. In this way it explores
the archetypal tensions between darkness and light, destruction and creation,
death and rebirth, and challenges the political Juggernaut that still
today propels us towards nuclear holocaust.
 The
personal level of THE FIRST LIGHT focuses on the life story of Takashi
Tanemori, a Hibakusha, or Hiroshima survivor, who was eight years old
when the bomb was dropped on his hometown and most of his family was killed.
Takashi's treacherous and emotional journey from Japan to America and
back, from youth to old age, from vengeful hate to forgiveness, and his
eventual emergence as a peacemaker, becomes the thread around which the
historical characters and events of the nuclear era are woven.
Simultaneously,
mythical characters are juxtaposed against the historical to illustrate
the archetypal nature of the nuclear drama. Thus, we open the show with
a riveting dialogue between Dr. Frankenstien and Albert Einstien, both
scientists whose well-intentioned experiments go dangerously out of control.
Soon thereafter we meet the Hopi underworld diety Panayoikyasi, whose
discovery by archaeolgists as a stone effigy buried beneath the Arizona
sands parallels the first test of a nuclear bomb, at the Trinity site
in neighboring New Mexico. Thereafter the Hindu trident-bearing Lord Shiva
appears to dance the eternal dance of destruction, and again he dances
with every subsequent nuclear experiment, from the South Pacific to North
Africa to Kazakhstan to Nevada to the deserts of India and Pakistan. Meanwhile
Panayoikyasi keeps raising his mighty fist with nuclear disasters like
Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, and the Shinto Sun Goddess Amaterasu
increasingly removes her life-giving light from the world, ultimately
taking shelter in a cave. There she encounters Count Dracula, another
cave dweller, whose blood-draining vampirism parallels the global parasitism
of the military-industrial complex. Not until the end of the show is Amaterasu
finally lured from her cave of hopelessness by the raucous drumming and
dancing of desperate living beings on Earth. Thus she overcomes the reign
of her storm god brother Susano-wo, and light returns to the world.
 To
date only a few songs and dramatic sketches have been created for THE
FIRST LIGHT. Composer Jim Berenholtz has written music for a dance sequence
entitled "Bringers of the Storm", as well as the songs "One
Blade of Grass", "Father", and "Hearts of Ice".
Storytellers Nancy Wang and Robert Kikuchi-Yngojo (together known as Eth-Noh-Tec)
have developed an already acclaimed short dramatic work entitled "Takashi's
Dream". Mr. Tanemori has also written extensively about his lifestory
in a poetic/literary work entitled "The
Vision of the Crane and the Butterfly". The next step is to flesh
out the storyline of the musical and develop it into a book, and then
to compose the rest of the songs. THE FIRST LIGHT artists seek other fellow
artists to share in bringing this theatrical vision to life, as well as
directors and producers to bring shape and financing to the project. Our
intention is to put this musical on the American and Japanese stage, and
ultimately on the world stage where the hotly debated issues of our times
are addressed.
.
|
