Every year a group of students from Japan arrive in Olympia and produce a theatrical event courtesy of the Academy of International Education. In 2002 they included a stage version of my comic series Bezango WA 985 in their production.
My brother Bryan is usually one of the organizers, and hence my connection to the 2002 season.
In this performance, he selected ten characters from the first two or three issues and had the students perform my narrative verbatim from the books.
It was a freaky experience to see these lines on paper come to life with Japanese accents. Director Kimiko Nakagawa presented it as a "movement piece." Many of the characters in Bezango WA 985 were based on real life figures, and I was astounded to see a few of the actors do a fairly good imitation of these folks without ever having met them.
The venue was the old State Theater in Olympia, Washington. Posted are selected parts of the program.
