Last week to see Jude Narita at Highways!
See LA Times Review below.
"With Darkness Behind Us, Daylight Has Come"
written and performed by JUDE NARITA
With Darkness Behind Us, Daylight Has Come, is a multi-media one-woman play
about the effects of the internment camps on three different generations of
Japanese American women in the Los Angeles area. Both funny and sad, With
Darkness Behind Us, Daylight Has Come is a moving theatrical experience.
directed by Darling Narita
music by George Abe
lighting design by Jerry Browning
When: Fri & Sat, April 20 & 21 - 8:30 pm
Sunday matinee April 22 - 3pm
Where: Highways Performance Space
1651 18th St in Santa Monica.
(Enter 18th St. from Olympic. Parking is available in a lot and on nearby
streets.)
Tickets general admission $12.
STUDENT AND SENIOR DISCOUNT TICKETS $10
or $10 with $2 discount coupon from "Fresh Tracks" program
Reservations 310.315.1459.
For more information on Jude and upcoming gigs go to:
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Los Angeles Times
Theater Review
April 19, 200
by F. Kathleen Foley
Jude Narita's 'Darkness' Is Witty and Poignant
The lastest in Jude Naarita's rich canon of one-woman shows, "With Darkness
Behind Us, Daylight Has Come," at Highways, takes on the helf and poignancy
of oral history, much as did Narita's 1987 solo turn, "Coming Into
Passion/Song for a Sansei."
While "Sansei" beautifully explored differences between Japanese-born
Americans and their Westernized offspring, "Darkness" takes on one specific
s
ubject?the experiences of Japanese American women interned by the U.S.
government during World War II.
Narita's daughter, Darling Narita, directs, a lovely intergenerational
touch, considering Narita's past emphasis on the conflicts and commonalities
between parents and their children. The staging is slightly rough-edged,
not
quite the polished accomplishments of "Sansei." Yet Narita, ever the
gracious storyteller, is at her warmest and most accessible, displaying a
roguish humor that issurprising in such a poignant contex.
George Abe's live music, period slides and a video of Narita wandering
through the ruins of the Heart Mountain, Wyoming, camp, evoke the properly
wistful atmosphere. The play is largely a series of first-person
narratives,
ranging from the reminiscences of older women, wjo are looking back on their
camp experiences in retrospect, to the agonized musings of a teenage girl,
an
internee who has recently gotten work that her G.I. brother has beenkilled
in
action.
That sharp irony is almost overwhelming, yet Narita's sweetly upbeat
touch penetrates her audience's complacency more keenly than tirades or
recriminations ever could. In this story well told, Narita universalizes
the
experience of the camps for all audiences, humanizing that bitter chapter in
history with percention and restraint.
