Factory Presents THE TASHME PROJECT

By: Dec. 17, 2018
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Factory presents The Tashme Project: The Living Archives, an award-winning verbatim theatre piece crafted and performed by Julie Tamiko Manning and Matt Miwa, directed by Mike Payette, in the Mainspace from January 29 - February 10, 2019.

Created from extensive interviews with more than 20 Nisei, second generation Japanese Canadians who were children during internment, The Tashme Project: The Living Archives traces their childhood pre- and post-confinement. Gracefully moving from story to story, Manning and Miwa inhabit the voices of the children, highlighting unexpected moments of wonder and play, while finding a deep connection to their elders. Almost 80 years later, a new generation of Japanese Canadians are exploring the impact of Canada's internment laws during World War II.

Julie Tamiko Manning and Matt Miwa, co-artistic directors of Tashme Productions, met nine years ago at the NAC in Ottawa and quickly bonded over their Japanese Canadian heritage. Once they discovered both their families had been interned in Tashme, they knew there was a story they had to investigate. They began by interviewing their own family interned in Tashme. "There is a legacy of silence around internment, passed down through Japanese family and culture that prompted us to create the show. It is a silence we are still trying to understand, to honour and to articulate," said Manning, who with Miwa, is passionately committed to vitalizing Japanese Canadian cultural pride.

Julie Tamiko Manning is an award-winning Montreal actor and theatre creator whose first play, Mixie and the Halfbreeds (with Adrienne Wong) is on the list 49 plays by Women of Colour That You Can Program Tomorrow and was produced by fu-GEN this past Spring. She is beginning work on her third play, Mizushobai, (commissioned by Montreal's Tableau D'Hôte Theatre) about Kiyoko Tanaka-Goto, a Japanese picture bride turned business woman in 1930's British Columbia.

Matt Miwa is a theatre, performance and video artist based in Ottawa, where he works to build bridges and collaboration between cultural communities. Matt is currently in residency with Ottawa's undercurrents theatre festival in which he is writing and directing a new piece entitled, "Bold Woman, Love!" both a dream play and a modern retelling of Electra's story. Matt proudly serves on the board of the Ottawa Japanese Community Association.

Mike Payette is the co-founder and former Artistic Director of Tableau D'Hôte Theatre. Directing credits include the Montréal premieres of A Line in the Sand, Elizabeth Rex, Harlem Duet, Another Home Invasion, and the Montréal English-language premiere of Michel Tremblay's Hosanna for which he won a Montreal English Theatre Award for Outstanding Direction. In April, Mike will helm the production of Lorena Gale's Angélique coming to Factory.

Thirty years after the official government apology to Japanese Canadians, the spirit and the stories of the Nisei are bridging generations and providing another perspective on the Canadian immigrant experience.

THE TASHME PROJECT: THE LIVING ARCHIVES runs January 29 - February 10, 2019 with opening night on Wednesday, January 30, 2019 at 8pm.



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