In the first half of the ingeniously crafted play KILO-WAT by Aaron Asano Swenson, Ken, the Japanese-American podcaster, takes the audience through the family roots and foundations in the story about Wat ‘Kilo-Wat’ Misaka as a sports star. A Utah native of Japanese descent, he played point guard to lead the University of Utah basketball team to an NCAA championship in 1944 and the NIT championship in 1947. He also broke the color barrier when he was picked up by the then New York Knickerbockers.
For this solo actor play, images of Misaka’s life are projected on a large screen onstage, as audience members settle into their seats. When the play starts, Ken carries onstage a portable kamishibai (paper theater) or butai—a wooden frame with hinged doors that open from both sides and the top, about the size of a briefcase. However, this butai resembles, in part, a radio set from the 1940s with the knobs that were turned to find the right station frequency.
A Plan-B Theatre production directed by Jerry Rapier, it has a limited public performance run at Kingsbury Hall at the University of Utah, Feb. 14-16, in a co-production with UtahPresents’ Stage Door Series.
The play begins when Ken (Bryan Kido) strikes together a pair of hyōshigi (clapping wood) and proclaims, “Yotte irasshai, mitte irasshai! Yotte irasshai, mitte irasshai! Kamishibai no jikan da yo!”
The paper theater has begun — a beautifully woven chronicle of history and legend, with narrative markers rendered in impressive title cards the playwright designed. It is the most unconventional and bold one-actor production that this critic has seen in years but it also succeeds with the same significance as Jenifer Nii’s Fire! achieved in ensuring Wallace Thurman’s permanent spot in the history of Utah as well as the Harlem Renaissance.
Swenson deftly uses the strengths of legend and history for audiences to appreciate the Japanese roots of the man at the center of his story. Acknowledging his basketball fame, Misaka, an Ogden, Utah native, who was born in December, 1923, had earned the eponymous nickname. The power of legend is in full force. When Ken tells us about the stormy winter night when he was born, Fusaichi and Tatsuyo, Misaka’s parents, decided to venture out to find a midwife to help with the delivery but the blinding snow separated them briefly. However, their son could not wait and he was born, with his mother cradling him in her arms under the canopy of a large tree. Fusaichi found the two and decided to help secure them at the tree:
The sky filled with a deafening flash. Lightning had struck the tree. It raced down the trunk, through her body, and along the cord toward the child. But the knot was strong, and the lightning could not pass. Thinking quickly, Tatsuyo tied a second knot behind the lightning, trapping it in place.
While audience is captivated by elements of myth and legend that endear us to Misaka, the basketball star and pioneer, Ken leaves those realms to take us into a stark and blunt world about the other part of his story. That is, World War II and the times of the Japanese incarceration camp. Misaka was drafted twice by the American military, including his service with the U.S. Strategic Bombing Surveys when he was tasked with interviewing survivors of the Hiroshima atomic blast.
Ken tells us, “Most interviewers never asked about this part of his story. It doesn’t have much to do with basketball. Beyond that, how would you start? Interviewers avoided the subject for almost seventy years.” As The Utah Review noted in the preview, the irony of history runs deep in his story.
When Misaka played basketball, he knew his friends and teammates would support him whenever fans of an opposing team taunted him with bigoted, racist and hateful chants. His skills as a point guard infuriated those on the opposing side but he also had proved why so many people thought his famous nickname was well deserved. But, in this different role, as Ken tells us, “He was surrounded by people who looked like him, and he felt more alone than ever.”
Ken (Kido’s tone and emotional choices are excellent) does not hold back on emphasizing the historical gravity of Misaka’s assignment. Swenson nicely handles the tricky challenge of letting us glimpse the emotions he experienced as he researched the materials for writing his script. And, we hear for the first and only time in the play from Ken some words from Misaka: “It was a no man’s land for me—all of Japan, but especially Hiroshima. The Japanese, they saw the uniform and hated it, and me in it. But I had to wear it to remind the Americans they could trust me. Everywhere I turned, I felt like a traitor in someone’s eyes.”
Throughout his long life (he died in 2019), Misaka never sought the spotlight nor celebrity status on his own. As mentioned earlier in the preview feature at The Utah Review, he believed that his story was never a “big deal.” Perhaps, he comprehended how the forces of legend and the record of history can shape, contort, obscure and erase the important truths of our lives. For better or worse, legends are propagated by word of mouth, creative and artistic license and propaganda. If his legacy was a big deal, as many believed, then it would be allowed to thrive upon its historical foundations.
Swenson tells us that Misaka’s story is a big deal but not for the obvious and immediate reasons we are initially drawn to it. KILO-WAT knits together the common threads that pull us closer to a truthful, more instructive history of Misaka’s life and significance. More importantly, look at what is missing and what chroniclers of history decided to highlight and exclude, which ultimately tells us more about the community and society at the time than the fact of Misaka’s groundbreaking accomplishments as a college and professional basketball athlete.
Public performances are sold out for the run. However, those interested in attending can call the UtahPresents office at 801-581-7100 to be put on a waiting list for the following performances: Feb. 14 and Feb.15 at 7:30 p.m. and meatiness on Feb. 15 at 4 p.m. and Feb. 16 at 2 p.m. For information, see the Plan-B Theatre page. and for tickets is the Utah Presents page.
The play also will offer four free student previews Feb. 11-13, for students in grades 7-12, and a free high school tour Feb. 18-21, to Davinci Academy in Ogden, City Academy in Salt Lake City, and Utah Arts Academy in St. George, all part of Plan-B’s A Week With A Play program.