“In order to reconcile things, you have to examine them first,” Dan Hurlin explained last Friday evening during his company’s performance, “The World of Dan Hurlin,” at the World Music Hall. Performing excerpts from “Hiroshima Maiden,” researched, written, and directed by Hurlin himself, Hurlin and his cast uncovered painful historical memories of the United States and Japan during World War II through the surprisingly moving and beautiful medium of puppetry. “Hiroshima Maiden” premiered at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn in 2004 and is currently touring the country.
“Hiroshima Maiden” tells the story of 25 Japanese women disfigured by the atomic bomb who come to the United States for reconstructive surgery. The women eventually become minor celebrities in the United States, even releasing a pop song, “Smile, Please Come Back.” The State Department allows the media to show the women only in silhouette because of their disfiguration. Telling the story from the perspective of a young American boy (whose character Hurlin admits is semi-autobiographical), Hurlin and his cast try to examine a bleak era in United States history in order to reconcile it.
Considering the subject matter, audience members may have entered the theater slightly skeptical – could puppets really lend emotional leverage to such an upsetting subject? Yet, after watching the show, and listening to the performers and puppeteers speak on the matter, one realizes that actors couldn’t have had the emotional impact the puppets and their puppeteers brought to the piece.
“There’s an emotional weight in puppetry that doesn’t come through in acting,” one puppeteer explained. “Emotions come across more with puppets.”
These ideas certainly became clear throughout the show. For example, to demonstrate the disfiguration of the Japanese women, pieces of the puppets’ faces slowly fall away, revealing raw, red areas underneath in a very emotional and heartbreaking scene. Yet if a director were to use Hurlin’s script in a movie with live actors, this moment might be filled with screaming and gore. The emotional weight of the scene would be lost.
A few of the puppeteers mentioned the amount of choreography necessary for their art, as many of the puppeteers also worked as dancers. Often up to three people worked together closely to move one puppet, synchronizing their movements in order for the puppet to move smoothly and realistically. One member of the cast commented on this aspect, saying how the puppeteers often spent four hours of rehearsal figuring out to move one puppet from Point A to Point B.
Hurlin said that his show, especially the puppet representation of “This Is Your Life,” a television program which once aired an episode featuring a Hiroshima Maiden, portrays the first moments of cultural reconciliation between Japan and the United States following the atomic bomb.
He mentioned performing the piece for two Hiroshima Maidens whom he interviewed while researching the topic and who enthusiastically embraced his production.
Hurlin’s show gave Wesleyan a chance to view an intriguing medium. The excerpts from “Hiroshima Maiden” proved how puppetry can provide an instrument for cultural reconciliation and historical representation through the arts.
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