From the award-winning Canadian playwright, performer, and radio
broadcaster Tetsuro Shigematsu comes 1 Hour Photo, the follow-up to
his acclaimed one-man play Empire of the Son, which was nominated for
six Jessie Richardson Theatre Awards. Shigematsu's outstanding new play,
another multifaceted portrayal of a singular figure, tells the story of
Mas Yamamoto, a man whose life was swept up by the major currents of the
twentieth century:
"The year is 1977, the place planet Earth, and even though some of you
were not yet born, believe me when I say it was very cool time in which
to be alive ... Some of the things you know and love today were just
being introduced. A movie named Star Wars came out. The U.S.
Department of Defense launched a series of satellites you know as GPS.
1977 was the year the Apple II went on sale. You wouldn't have wanted
the Apple I. It was made of wood. Seriously! ... But for my money, the
coolest thing to launch in 1977 was one of the very first digital
cameras. It was the size of a Volkswagen Beetle, if you can believe it,
but here's the cool thing: they called it Voyager."
From growing up in a fishing village on the banks of the Fraser River in
British Columbia, to being confined at a Japanese Canadian internment
camp during the Second World War, to helping build the Distant Early
Warning Line in the Canadian Arctic during the height of the Cold War,
1 Hour Photo's Mas Yamamoto is a grand theatrical persona, his life
saturated with the most vivid colours of our times.
