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By exploring the major currents of the 20th century through the life story of one man, Mas Yamamoto,
1 Hour Photo presents a moving portrait of our times.
About the author
Tetsuro Shigematsu is a Canadian playwright, comedian, and radio broadcaster. Originally trained in the fine arts, he found a creative outlet writing for CBC Television's
This Hour Has 22 Minutes. Then, in 2004, he became the first person of colour to host a daily national radio program in Canada when he took over
The Roundup on CBC Radio, for which he co-wrote and co-produced nearly a thousand hours of network programming. He has written and produced more than fifty pieces of radio drama as well as the feature film
Yellow Fellas (2007). He is currently a Vanier scholar and Ph.D. candidate at the University of British Columbia. Follow him on Twitter (@tweetsuro) or visit his website, shiggy.com.
Summary
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.
Additional text
1 Hour Photo is a powerful piece of writing that insists that the complex history of Canada, including the wrongs imposed on groups of people, must be remembered
