Shuriken: A play by Vincent O'Sullivan
By Phillip Mann and Vincent O'Sullivan
4/5
()
About this ebook
Related to Shuriken
Related ebooks
MacArthur and the UFOs Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Never Surrender: Dramatic Escapes from Japanese Prison Camps Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Blood Brothers A Medics Sketch Book Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Final Betrayal: MacArthur and the Tragedy of Japanese POWs Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBlood Brothers: A Medic's Sketch Book Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings82 Days on Okinawa: One American's Unforgettable Firsthand Account of the Pacific War's Greatest Battle Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Reprieve From Hell Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Victory in Defeat: The Wake Island Defenders in Captivity, 1941-1945 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTidal Wave: From Leyte Gulf to Tokyo Bay Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Survival on the Death Railway and Nagasaki Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Blackened Canteen Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBy Hellship to Hiroshima Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hell's Heroes Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsUrashima Book 1 Going Back Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsShowdown in the Pacific War: Nimitz and Yamamoto Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHeroic Survivor An Incredible Story of Survival in the World War II Pacific Theater Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Jack Ford Story: Newfoundland's POW in Nagasaki Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBlack Sheep Ace: Flying Sergeant Sammy Alpheus Pierce Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Last Man Rise of the Pink Army Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRoad of Bones: The Siege of Kohima 1944 – The Epic Story of the Last Great Stand of Empire Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Japanese Empire Disaster Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSilent Warriors: Submarine Warfare in the Pacific Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRed Chrysanthemum: A novel of Occupied Japan Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Surviving Hiroshima: A Young Woman's Story Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Emperor's Guest Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Rock and a Hard Place Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Japanese and the War: Expectation, Perception, and the Shaping of Memory Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMonster Earth: Monster Earth Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Conscript in Korea Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Performing Arts For You
Becoming Free Indeed: My Story of Disentangling Faith from Fear Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5For colored girls who have considered suicide/When the rainbow is enuf Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Science of Storytelling: Why Stories Make Us Human and How to Tell Them Better Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Macbeth (new classics) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Diamond Eye: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Importance of Being Earnest: A Play Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Hollywood's Dark History: Silver Screen Scandals Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Sisters Brothers Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Robin Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Quite Nice and Fairly Accurate Good Omens Script Book: The Script Book Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Romeo and Juliet Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hamlet Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Stories I Only Tell My Friends: An Autobiography Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lucky Dog Lessons: From Renowned Expert Dog Trainer and Host of Lucky Dog: Reunions Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Our Town: A Play in Three Acts Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes: Revised and Complete Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Coreyography: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Dolls House Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Count Of Monte Cristo (Unabridged) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Art of Dramatic Writing: Its Basis in the Creative Interpretation of Human Motives Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Unsheltered: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mash: A Novel About Three Army Doctors Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Best Women's Monologues from New Plays, 2020 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Strange Loop Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Trial Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The World Turned Upside Down: Finding the Gospel in Stranger Things Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Fifth Mountain: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Woman Is No Man: A Read with Jenna Pick Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Shuriken
6 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
Shuriken - Phillip Mann
VINCENT O’SULLIVAN
SHURIKEN
SHURIKEN
Vincent O’Sullivan
Contents
Title Page
First Performance
Author’s Note
Characters
Photographs of the Original Downstage Production
Shuriken
Translations of Maori and Japanese
By the Same Author
Copyright
First Performance
Shuriken was first performed at Downstage, Wellington, on 29 July 1983, with the following cast:
Directed by Phillip Mann
Designed by Anne Coombes
State Manager, Keith Tait
Lighting by Stephen Blackburn
Author’s Note
Like most New Zealanders, I knew there had been some kind of ‘incident’ in Featherston during the Second World War, and that Japanese prisoners were shot by their guards. But also like most New Zealanders, I knew about it in only the haziest way. I presumed, I suppose, that the prisoners must have been escaping, and that the event was unavoidable. Only a couple of years ago, while preparing an article for the Listener, did I find out more about it.
For many years, the findings of the military commission that investigated what occurred at 11 a.m. on 25 February 1943, had been unavailable to the public. The inquiry was a limited one — understandable for a country at war — but it left in the air questions that might interest a civilian. And a little reading made one thing very clear. Featherston was certainly not a mutiny. Nor was it an attempted outbreak, nor a massacre, nor in any sense an execution. Yet whatever name one chooses to put on it, in less than a minute there were thirty-one Japanese dead, and ninety-one wounded. Nineteen others died over the next few days. There was also one dead New Zealander, and seven injured.
Almost forty years after the event, I was able to meet several of the New Zealand guards, one of the camp’s interpreters, and two of the chaplains. One of the guards allowed me to read his own account of life in the camp, and another lent me copies of statements made by the Japanese when they returned home.
It is difficult to think of two peoples less prepared for each other personally than New Zealanders and Japanese in the 1940s. There had never before been a prison-of-war camp for Japanese soldiers, any more than the imperial military code offered instructions for how prisoners should behave. We had no experience as guards; they had no philosophy to help them cope under arrest. Two groups of men were forced into the closest association, with neither really knowing what to expect of the other. There are few stories where there is such a dramatic meeting between East and West. There is no other New Zealand story anything like it. At first I thought it would make an interesting piece of fiction. In fact, it was already drama.
Shuriken, then, is a war play without ‘goodies’ or ‘baddies’. There was nothing that could make the average Japanese soldier at ease in a New Zealand POW camp, and there was no way the average Kiwi soldier could grasp how his charges thought. I wanted to write a play, then, about quite ordinary men, thrown into a setting where there could only be confusion. I tried not to distort what I knew happened in the camp. I was also quite openly writing not history, but a play.
To suggest the hierarchical structure of the prison camp I have set the action of the play on two levels. The Camp Commandant and the Adjutant usually are seen on the upper level. The prisoners and other ranks of the New Zealanders share the normal stage area. It is important that the prisoners are on stage at all times, even if only as shadowy or peripheral presences, during the scenes between the New Zealanders.
Music is essential to the atmosphere of the play. In the Downstage production, Japanese music was played during all scene changes except those in which specifically named Western tunes were used. To the production, and to myself, it was extremely important that the Ngati Porou so kindly allowed us to use ‘Haere ra e hika’, a traditional waiata, at the end of Act I and the beginning of Act II. It may not be possible in other productions to repeat the authenticity of this lament, but always a Maori song must be used at those points to convey that third dimension in the play, and that other culture which was perhaps as far removed from pakeha New Zealanders as it was from the Japanese.
Characters
New Zealanders
C
AMP
C
OMMANDANT
. Mid fifties.
A
DJUTANT.
Thirties.
J
ACKO
. Early forties.
Japanese
A
DACHI
. Mid twenties.
C
HARLIE
. Late thirties.
S
IX
P
RISONERS
. All in their twenties, or younger.
The play is set in the POW camp at Featherston, Wairarapa, in the summer of 1942–43. The final scene takes place on the morning of 25 February 1943.
Lewis Martin as the Camp Commandant and (from left), Vinij Khureya, Soo How Koh, Leo Donnelly, Cliff Wood and Rick Loos as Japanese prisoners. (All photos are of Downstage 1983 production, photographer Robert Cross.)
Jacko (Desmond Kelly) comforts Ernie (Chris Mills) with a drink, p. 36
The prisoners question Jacko (Desmond Kelly) about Christ, p.42. The prisoners (from left) are Leo Donnelly, Rick Loos, Vinij Khureya and Timothy Bartlett.
Tai (Pou Temara) and Ernie (Chris Mills) break up the wrestling match, p. 61. The wrestler is Leo Donnelly. Standing to the right are Vinij Khureya and Rick Loos.
Leo Donnelly and Akira Kikuchi as Japanese prisoners, p. 17.
Tai (Pou Temara) reporting the Commandant’s order to ‘proceed as usual’, p. 81. Prisoners (from left) are Soo How Koh, Rick Loos and Leo Donnelly.
Tiny (Colin McColl) acting as interpreter, p. 83. The prisoners, are (from left) Cliff Wood, Timothy Bartlett, Vinij Khureya (obscured), Akira Kikuchi and Soo How Koh.
Shuriken
Prologue
The play begins with a clip from wartime films. It shows various scenes of the Emperor and