This award-winning play reflects on family, life, and the love of two Japanese Canadians, Mas and Midge. The script is interspersed with a rich collection of historical photos. Additionally, production photos feature miniature replicas representing Nikkei life and the internment of Japanese Canadians, which began in 1942 and saw more than 21,000 Japanese Canadian citizens forcibly relocated, many to internment camps in south-central BC. Mas reflects on his pre- and post-internment years, having been sent with 2,000 other Nikkei to Lemon Creek Internment Camp, where he met Midge Ayukawa, his first love. Insightful historical commentary relates the internment of Japanese Canadians to the Indian Act, through which the Canadian government had, as Shigematsu puts it, “150 years of practice confining entire communities onto the worst land and legislating race-based laws.” A powerful artistic and historical educational tool.

112 pp., 5.5 × 8.5", b&w photographs

Source: Association of Book Publishers of BC - BC Books for Schools (2021-2022)

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.

Tetsuro Shigematsu's profile page

• Short-listed, Governor General's Literary Award for Drama
• Winner, Jessie Richardson Award for Significant Artistic Achievement - Small Theatre

"Like its predecessor, 1 Hour Photo is both emotionally revealing and formally inventive."
–Georgia Straight

"The play’s also a technical and multimedia achievement, building off the experiments that Shigematsu and his production team first tried out during the Empire of the Sonrun. Audiences can expect a barrage of video footage, intricately designed scale models as set pieces, and a combination of live and recorded audio and music."
–Ben Bengtson, North Shore News