July 28, 2005

Anne Weigand, a cast member of “Little Boy: The Peace Play”, with a figure created by the play’s visual designer, Pierre Nagley. The play is part of a collaborative peace experience cosponsored by YS Kids Playhouse, the Dharma Center, Shirley/Jones Gallery and the Dayton International Peace Museum. The event will take place Aug. 5 – 7 at 7:30 p.m., beginning with the play at the Antioch Theater and continuing with a candlelit walk to the Shirley/Jones Gallery.

Joint peace event highlights hope

By Diane Chiddister

On Aug. 6, 1945 the United States dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and the world changed forever. Next week a group of Yellow Springs artists and peace workers will join in a creative collaboration to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with a peace experience for children and adults. Especially, they said in a recent interview, the collaborators seek to offer hope that humans have other alternatives to using such weapons.

“Since 1945 we’ve had the birth of the United Nations, Gandhi and nonviolence, Martin Luther King and the Dayton Accords,” said Michael Jones of the Shirley/Jones Gallery. “We have a lot of clear things, a lot of lessons that have proven the viability of a new mode.”

The Shirley/Jones Gallery will join with the YS Kids Playhouse, the Dharma Center and the Dayton International Peace Museum to sponsor the peace events next weekend.

On Friday through Sunday, Aug. 5–7, the YSKP will present Little Boy: The Peace Play at the Antioch Theater, and on Monday and Tuesday, Aug. 8 and 9, the play will be presented at the Dayton Playhouse, 1301 East Siebenthaler, in Dayton. All performances will begin at 7:30 p.m.

Little Boy is a collaborative work by playwright Neill Kramer, artist Pierre Nagley, choreographer Tricia Gelmini and John Fleming, who will direct the piece. Music is by the Pakastani-based composer Mohammad Behleem.

Little Boy is a “sci-fi ode to future peace and the joys of being human,” according to Fleming, who said the play was influenced by Japanese comic book artistry. It is a metaphorical and poetic play, “almost entirely visuals and movement,” he said. The play features 18 local and area children. According to Fleming, the children have, during the rehearsal period, taken part in discussions about peace on a United Nations children’s Web site.

Each Little Boy performance will be part of a larger peace experience, designed for both children and adults. Following the Yellow Springs performance, attendees may join in a candlelit walk down the bikepath to the Shirley/Jones Gallery, led by representatives from the Dharma Center. At the gallery, they will attend a reception for “Childhood’s End,” a painting installation by Chicago artist Michiko Itatani, which she created for the 50th anniversary of Hiroshima. Itatani is a Japanese-born artist who currently teaches at the Chicago Art Institute.

Yellow Springs participants may also visit at the gallery the Dayton International Peace Museum’s PeaceMobile, which will feature the exhibit, “How Dayton Helped End A War: the 10th Anniversary of the Dayton Peace Accords.”

The peace event collaboration began a year ago, when Jones and Karen Shirley of the Shirley/Jones Gallery presented the exhibit “Unforgettable Fire,” drawings by those who experienced the atomic blasts and survived. The exhibit was the first of an annual August show that addresses the theme of peace in recognition of the anniversary of Hiroshima, Jones said.

One who attended the exhibit was Fleming. Jones suggested that the YSKP could do a show this year to commemorate the 60th anniversary of Hiroshima. and three weeks later, Jones said, Fleming returned and said he would do a play.

Over the year, Fleming said, he visited the Dayton Peace Museum, and found that two of the museum’s organizers, Lisa Wolters and her husband, Fred Arment, live in Yellow Springs. He asked if they would join the event, and also contacted the Dharma Center representatives, including Dianeah Wanicek, who said they would like to join in.

The collaboration helps to enhance the focus of each individual participant, Wolters said.

“It’s a way to gather people together under one umbrella to give more energy to what’s going on,” Wolters said.

For Wanicek, the hopefulness of the event is its most important aspect.

“Once people see horrific things they need to be reminded of the amazing possibilities of the human being,” she said. “The play offers an experience of the heart opening.”

The play is experiential, the collaborators said, and each participant will take away his or her own interpretation.

For Nagley, working on Little Boy is a continuation of the spiritual journey he experienced when he visited Hiroshima several years ago.

“The entire city is a symbol of peace,” he said. “This play is a perfect way for me to express my feelings. I feel honored to do something like this.”

Tickets for Little Boy are $8 for adults and $6 for children and senior citizens. Reservations, which are recommended, may be made by calling 769-1030. For more information, go on-line at www.yskp.org, www.shirley-jonesgallery.com or www.daytonpeacemuseum.org.