Wars only work when we think of the enemy as a faceless group of people, responsible for some communal wrong that means they need to be defeated (of course, both sides feel this way). When we meet them on a face-to-face basis, when we take the little people out of the shadows cast by the decisions of their leaders, what we’re left with is a complicated emotional tangle in which black and white gives way to a thousand different shades of gray.
The terrible gray of the forced internment of Japanese Americans during World War II is explored in Matthew Ivan Bennett’s “Block 8,” which is being brought back with a free reading on Feb. 4 at 7 p.m. at the Salt Lake Buddhist Temple, located at 211 W. 100 South (the reading is free, but you have to register in advance to make sure you get a seat). The play, set at a library at the Topaz, Utah Japanese Internment Camp, follows the strained connection between a man interred at the camp and the local woman whose son is fighting overseas and is taking a job at the camp library to support her family. The cast, which includes Anita Booher as Ada and Bryan Kido as Ken, will be reprising the roles they first held during the show’s sold out run in 2008 at Plan-B Theatre Company.
The reading is being held in conjunction with the “Topaz: Artists in Internment” exhibit at the Rio Grande Gallery, which runs through Feb. 10. Both activities are being held to honor the Day of Remembrance on Feb. 19, which marks the anniversary of President Franklin Roosevelt signing Executive Order 9066. It was that order that ordered Japanese Americans incarcerated in internment camps.
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