MARLBORO — Kimi Maeda's father was one of the thousands of Japanese-Americans who were incarcerated in a “relocation camp” during World War II.
On Monday, Feb. 22, at 7:30 p.m., Marlboro College presents Bend, Maeda's multimedia solo performance piece that tells the true story of her father, Robert Maeda, and Isamu Noguchi, a half-Japanese-half-American sculptor, who were incarcerated in a camp together. The performance is free and open to the public.
With sand as her canvas and brooms, rakes, and blocks of wood as her brushes, she transforms image after image, calling to mind the Arizona desert camp where Robert Maeda was interned. In the process, she explores the relationship of Meada's father, an Asian art historian suffering from dementia, and the subject of his research, Noguchi.
This work considers the question: If memory forms our personal identity, and shared memory forms our cultural and even racial identity, what does it mean when memories and our homes are lost?
“This is a timely story, given the current political discourse around internment camps for Mexicans and other immigrants,” said Marlboro President Kevin Quigley. “Bend brings this story vividly to life, and inspires deeper exploration in keeping with Marlboro's commitment to intellectual freedom and civic engagement.”
Marlboro College is presenting Bend through an Japanese American Citizen's League which is sponsoring Maeda's tour of Bend.
“The president of the league knew someone at Marlboro, I think,” Maeda says. Other stops on this tour include the University of Rochester, Tufts University, UMass-Boston, and Williams College, her own alma mater where she earned a B.A. in studio art.
“I studied to be a traditional studio artist there, and learned such crafts as print making,” she says.
However, Maeda was drawn to use her visual artistic gifts for the theater and, in graduate school, studied scenic design. She received her M.A. in scenography from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London.
Maeda is a theater artist whose intimate visual performances move across disciplines and push boundaries. She was the recipient of the 2005 Rose Brand Award from the United States Institute of Theatre Technology and her costume design for Polaroid Stories was chosen for display in the 2007 Prague Quadrennial.
Maeda is currently based in Columbia, S.C.,where she has made her home, on and off, since 2002.
“I first came to Columbia when I was going to Graduate School for my MFA at the University of South Carolina, and I discovered I liked it,” she says.
Although she left the city for a while, she came back to work as a puppeteer for several years for the Columbia Marionette Theatre. After three years there, she now sustains her career as a visual and theater artist by freelancing.
Kim sees herself a “theater artist” who works under the banner of “puppet theater.” While what Maeda does may not be what one normally considers traditional puppetry, she find theater companies that specialize with puppets are open to more variations in performance than traditional theaters, and she feels that she fits in better there.
“Don't misunderstand me, I have worked in marionette theater, and I use puppets in some of my other works,” she says. “But all and all, I would characterize what I do as object and experimental theater.”
In 2011, with local artist Lyon Hill, she founded a puppet production and promotion company, Belle et Bête, although she suspects the name may be too esoteric and so it may change. She and Hill created Planet Hopping, an intergalactic puppet adventure, as well as Grime and Glory, a multimedia puppet celebration of barbecue pitmasters.
“The biggest thing we do is organize the bi-annual Spork in Hand Puppet Slam,” Maeda says. “Here, rather like in the more familiar Story Slams, many artists are given the chance to perform short puppet works, ranging from around three to eight minutes. Because the works are short, people are encouraged to experiment.”
It was there where Maeda developed the seeds for several of the full show she now performs.
“I have done a lot of things in theater, from writing and performing, to set and costume design, even to building props, everything and anything,” she confesses. “As a freelance artist, you need to be flexible to make a living.”
Maeda's father's parents came from Japan, and he was born in California. Her mother was born in Japan.
She says, “I guess I am midway between a first and second generation Japanese. I was born in Boston, but grew up in Concord, Mass. It was a pretty white town, so I found myself caught in a clash between two cultures, a dilemma with which most of my work deals, including Bend.”
Bend concerns Maeda's father's interment in the camps where he met Noguchi when he nine years old. “Noguchi was in his mid 30's, so obviously they didn't interact that much,” says Maeda. “But my father saw him working there, and it left an indelible impression on him. My dad later became an art historian, and late in his career he began researching Noguchi for a book.”
Maeda's father died recently and that book was never finished.
“He left many notes, however, and from those notes I was able to create Bend,” she says.
The show is a memorial to her father.
“The piece includes audio and video clips of my dad, so while rehearsing or performing it I feel that he is still around,” says Kim. “While that has been emotionally difficult, it also a good thing for me.”
The center of the show is Maeda's creation of a drawing in sand commemorating her father's experience. The audiences watches on a live feed video projection as she creates.
“Intercut with this is archival footage of the camps, as well as videos and recordings of my father,” she says.
With this, she uses most temporal of all works of art, a drawing in sand,
“In the end, all that is left is the audience's memory of the performance,” she says.
Although the video of her making a creation in sand could seem a permanent film in itself, she does not want her show ever to be a canned product. “Each performance also considers my father's struggles with dementia, so memory is integral to what Bend is all about,” she says.
After the 50-minute performance, Maeda has a talk back with her audience.
“People have a chance to tell me their impressions of what they've seen or ask me questions,” says Maeda. “Often they want to know about the camps or Dad's illness.”
Recently, Maeda performed Bend in Arkansas where two of the internment camps were located.
“There is a terrific museum there about the Japanese-American experience in which I presented a performance for middle and high school students. The audience members told me that some of their parents had talked about the camps and wondered why such a thing was happening in our country.”
Maeda is pleased to be bringing Bend back to Southern Vermont. She had first visited Brattleboro many years ago when she took a field trip with with a group from an art camp in Massachusetts.
Last year, she participated in Sandglass Theater's Puppets in the Green Mountains. Maeda was invited to perform at the festival by Sandglass's founder and artistic director Eric Bass, who discovered her several years ago when she applied for a Jim Henson Foundation Seed on which Bass sat the board which oversaw the applications.
“I loved the festival!” she exclaimed. “I had a really amazing time. I was lucky and got to stay the whole time and see virtually all the shows in the festival.”