ABSTRACT

This chapter explores selected performance works from Maps of City and Body by Denise Uyehara, an award-winning third-generation Japanese-American interdisciplinary performance artist/writer/playwright whose vision echoes Jill Dolan's in believing that theater can inspire social change. Uyehara's progressive aesthetic and political vision insightfully links the unfair incarceration of her own Japanese-American ancestors by the US government during World War II to the injustices suffered by other communities of color in the US. Uyehara regards her work in Asian-American performance as an intervention that challenges contemporary notions of race and ethnicity. Uyehara creatively uses simple props such as a piece of paper in Vigil. The piece opens with Uyehara slowly turning in a circle with paper floating through the air. Uyehara's powerful work urges viewers/readers to remain vigilant about such unfair attacks and to speak up against injustice. Next, in Vigil, Uyehara reads the words of solidarity with Muslims and Arab-Americans spoken by Japanese-American Lilian Nakano, an internment camp survivor.