I Have Been To Hiroshima, Mon Amour--

--A play by Chiori Miyagawa, a Japanese writer who came to the States when she was 15. I saw it at the Ohio tonight; it runs through the end of May. The piece stimulated my brain the same way watching a Buñuel film does; I felt I could keep one part of my brain on the play while another part went deliberately from unrelated thought to unrelated thought, in good and interesting ways...I figured out how the seating arrangement for a new play might look, all the while listening to Joel de la Fuente and coming to the realization that he's a pretty good stage actor. The piece was layered, and fell together nicely (i.e. without feeling too obvious or too obtuse). I would love to work with this director, Jean Wagner, some time. It included some video and movement as well, in ways that seemed to fit and serve the piece (rather than take over the piece, as sometimes happens). I came away feeling as if I saw Hiroshima (and by association Nagasaki) from a new and different angle; it was not a jarring discovery or an emotional journey, but a thought-provoking view from a different vantage point.