About Birds of Peace
We developed this musical at the request of the Discovery Theater(http://discoverytheater.si.edu/), which is the educational theater of the Smiithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. We did eight performances for mostly school groups there in May 1999, and over the next four years performed the show at twelve different venues around Japan, including at the Peace Memorial Museum in Hiroshima. There we were fortunate to meet Sadako's father and brother, as well as her hospital roommate and nurse. We have restaged the show for 2006, and by the end of the year will mark our 50th performance of the musical.
We were very happy to be invited by the La Crosse Community Theatre of Wisconsin to perform our musical about Sadako Sasaki and her folded cranes. Highlights of our week there were the six performances put on by our cast of ten and a local chorus of fifteen, as well as staying with host families, making school visits, and being treated extremely well by everyone we met. There were many tears from both sides on closing night.
For the 1999 and 2006 USA performances, we asked the people of Ishikawa Prefecture to fold paper cranes as a message of peace. We brought 50,000 to Washington, DC, and 20,000 to La Crosse, distributing them mostly to school groups.
Choral or digest versions of the show have also been performed by junior highs, high schools and peace groups in Ishikawa and Osaka. |
