Monologue Performance “Wind’s Aria ~Wishes of the Bombed Kaki Tree”
Performance by Yoshino Saga
Script, Production and Sound by Seigo Yatagai
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Artist Anken Kidani
Since the planting on 26 February 2007, Artist Anken Kidani has been conducting a workshop at Karako Elementary School in cooperation with Higashi-Matsuyama municipal office. The annual workshop is for the third graders to pass down the stories of “the seedlings of the bombed kaki tree.”
This year, a collaborative workshop with Yoshino Saga’s Monologue Performance “Wind’s Aria ~Wishes of the Bombed Kaki Tree” took place. Second and third-grade pupils gathered in the school gymnasium at first, and each class visited the kaki seedlings planted in 2007. Many of them learned about the trees for the first time.
Then, Ms. Saga performed the monologue play. This is a play about “the life of the bombed kaki tree,” written by producer Seigo Yatagai. Ms. Saga did not go up to the stage in the gym, rather; she asked the pupils to sit down on the floor and began performing. Mr. Yatagai was responsible for sound, and the sounds of a train and chirping of birds drastically changed the atmosphere in the gym. It had been transformed into a place in Nagasaki where the kaki tree was living. Children watched the performance of the bombed tree’s life story intently until the end.
Then, they went out to see the kaki trees once again and came back to each classroom. Some asked whether the mother of these trees was the tree appeared in the performance.
Mr. Kidani asked them to draw the most impressive scene from the performance, and they started to draw. The tree which was healthy and well before the bombing, the damaged tree, the garden where the tree was planted, the seedlings that surrounded the tree — it seemed
