 Let's do it! My name is Taylor Mack. I'm interviewing harp artists in a series for a HowlRound so that we can all get to know them and their amazing projects that they're doing. If you don't know, Harp is a program, it's a residency artist program at the Hear Art Center. They give you multiple years to work on a project. It's artist driven, so you get to kind of decide what you need. Sometimes they produce your projects, sometimes they co-produce. Often the artist can say, I want to work on it for four years. I want to work on it for one year. I want to work on it for many, many, many years. So it's all just kind of how you want to do it. There's usually a lot of hybrid type of work, so combining music and theater and puppetry and dance and video and all of that kind of often gets squished into the work. And why don't you guys introduce yourselves and tell us a little bit about your projects? Yeah, because I don't really know either one of you, but I'm excited to get to know you. Do you want to start, Spencer? Go for it, Micah. I'm Michael. I'm Michael Kikuchi. So I started my theater career based on visual arts. So I, like, 2013, I started like first puppet show and, you know, since then, I just keep making my own puppetry works, extended from my visual artworks. And then we met, like, I met Spencer through the Lamas, like, I think that was like a puppet slam. And then we really like each other as a piece, and then we become friends. And he asked me to... That's the best way. I'm sorry to interrupt, but it's just the best way to... I know. To audition or apply for things. And the best possible way to find people is just to hang out in various festivals and watch their work and fall in love. Yeah, I agree. Through the puppets. That's the best. So, and then he asked me to collaborate and then apply for this here at Residency 2017, I think. And then he brought up the ideas, and that is the actual Japanese and America's World War II history, which I didn't know actually at the time. And I was so interested in, and then we decided to collaborate and apply for the here. So we got in and we've been making for over three years. And then now aiming to premiere our piece, more like leaning to the digital form, but at the same time having the live audience, if it's possible. This fall is September, November. Yeah, like November. So that's where we are at now. And is that a usual amount of time for you to work on a piece or do you tend to take that much time or is longer or less? We thought like it's actually we were premiering our piece like this past December. But then like right before we, you know, getting in more process to like make everything together, then like the world shut down. So it's extended. But I imagine you've had a lot of workshops in that period. Is that true? Yes, working progress shows and yeah. Yeah. All right. And Spencer, why don't you tell us a little bit about you? Yeah, yeah. I'm a puppet artist. I design and build and perform and direct and write and kind of the puppetry is the through line for lots of different kind of artistic careers. I create my own work independently. My kind of day job is in film and television puppetry. But then my kind of passion is theater. And like Michael said, I felt we saw each other's work and fell in love with, I fell in love with Michael's work. It's so visually dynamic and interesting and unique. So then, you know, like you said, when you're at a festival, you see something and you're like, oh, how can I get in the room with that person? How can I get to work with that person? And so I heard a radio lab story about these paper balloons coming from Japan and inspiration struck. And I was like, oh, this might be the perfect excuse to get to call up Michael and say, hey, do you want to jam on this? Do you want to see what we could make together? Yeah. So my piece is called 9000 Balloons. Is that what it's called? 9000 Paper Balloons. Yeah. Paper Balloons. And so talk a little bit about it. It has to do with World War II and internment camps, Japanese ghost stories, all of that. All of that. So it's actually a history, but almost blacked out. So that's why I didn't know the details about the first place. But the story is, the history is about, like, Japan's made 9000 Paper Balloons. So balloon made by the paper. But it's very, like, like a rigid balloon that oversees, like, over the Pacific Ocean. So it's a balloon that can travel all the way across the Pacific Ocean. Yeah. Exactly. Oh, so there wasn't any navigation. They were just, they send them up and they hope that the wind takes them there. Right. Yeah. So Japan, the scientists, like, military, all, like, figuring out how to make the weapon. And then the balloon has the bomb. Attaching to it. All right. Yeah, of course. No, it's not just a balloon. It's the bombs in the air. Yeah. I hope the jet stream would take them to the U.S. Isn't that ridiculous? That's exactly it. Japan was the first country to understand the jet stream. So they had measurements that there was this fast current moving of air. And they thought it might distribute over North America of the United States. And they were running out of materials. They didn't have a jet that could get across the ocean. They didn't have a missile that could get across the ocean. And so they made this was one of the secret weapons they developed. And it worked. These balloons, hundreds and hundreds of these balloons made it across the Pacific Ocean and then landed all over North America. There's one balloon as far east as Michigan, Kansas, Iowa, Oregon, Arizona, you name it. There were hundreds and hundreds of them. And they blew up when they landed? Is that the idea? Yeah, the idea was that as the balloon lost its air, it was full of hydrogen, it would fall. And as soon as it would touch, it would detonate. It was ultimately a failure. But their hope was that they would start forest fires and that really it was an act of error. The idea that Americans look up and there were silent bombs dropping from the sky. And so that's why we might go talks with the blackout. That was a military and oppressed blackout so that so that the American public didn't panic was was the idea. And then we talk about some of the casualties. There was one family in Oregon that discovered the shrapnel discovered a live bomb on a picnic and it detonated and killed these children. And so it's part of part of the narrative that we're weaving into the show. So it was blacked out from the American perspective, but was it blacked out from the Japanese history? Yeah, because because the Americans were so tight lipped about it, then the Japanese weren't sure if it was successful or not. They had no way to track it. So ultimately they gave even though they were reaching America, they ended up giving up the effort. It seems it's so both poetic and terrible. It has all these things that we were drawn to. Yeah. Yeah. And how do the internment camps work into the piece? So it's actually like not including the detail of the internment camp. Oh, okay. Is that an old idea? I read something. I read an idea. We were thinking about it. We were thinking about it when we apply and then we totally change. But yeah, we were kind of thinking about including the more detail about the internment camp at the beginning of the beginning stage of this piece. So our piece, we will show the clips later, but our piece is kind of shifting from some sort of the story we made up to more real, more involving each family's history. So yeah. And then so like my grandfathers also like what point in World War II and since that's grandfather too. And so like they're, you know, like essentially they're enemies, even though they're never met, but then they are grand children, become friends through puppetry and then making the piece together. Wonder of puppetry. World piece of puppetry, right? So that's kind of like become more important theme for us. So that's why we are not, our family history is like not really related to the internment camp. So that's why it's kind of like a little fading. But we are using from that time period, we are incorporating a lot of propaganda, both from the Japanese side and from the United States side, which kind of fills in Michael is this incredible collage artist. And so we're using these kind of really kind of bombastic intense propaganda images to kind of to kind of show the sense of the other things that we're going on racially during this time period. And how does juxtaposition work into this? Because, you know, balloons are so whimsical and beautiful and magical. And yet they're delivering this violence or this desire for violence. And so how is, how are you working with juxtaposition with your piece? Or is it just naturally there? I mean, that's been the question, right? As we explored shadows and all different types of puppetry, that's been the ultimate crux of how, what is this intersection? And we brought on a really talented director a couple of years ago, Aya Ogawa did Suicide Forest, a number of great shows. And we kind of circled around, we kind of landed on this question, how do we collapse the distance between us? And it felt like a broad enough question that it could approach that juxtaposition. And then it also fits with the kind of artwork that we're drawn to. We're kind of taking the 3D and collapsing it into 2D. We're collapsing the distance between our grandfathers, between two nations, between Michael and I. So that juxtaposition has become this kind of central question of collapsing distance. And I imagine anticipation too. You know, you send a balloon off and will it work? And that time that you're waiting for it to either arrive or... So, I mean, did the Americans know that this was all coming? I mean, was there, I don't know, spy knowledge that had been launched? They just know about it when it was arriving. That's exactly right. So there was a series of kind of unique, weird occurrences where somebody would get this giant scrap of paper in their farm. Or they would see something floating by that they thought were a UFO and they couldn't identify it. And they finally, in the military, the balloons were unmarked. So they weren't sure if it was a weapon, if it was a weather experiment or something. And they finally found out that it was a weapon and it was from Japan. So on the balloon bomb, on this ring that carried the bombs, there were all these sandbags that would release at timed places so that the balloon could stay in the jet stream as the temperature went up. So some of these sandbags dropped, I know, it's amazing. It's amazing like old school school. And so they looked in these sandbags and they discovered that the sand in the sandbag was only found on one specific beach in Japan. Oh, wow. And they're like, oh, this must be a weapon of war. And at the time, they weren't sure if they were going to carry chemical weapons or if there was going to be other payloads coming along. So I mean, it's straight out of science fiction, right? This floating kind of death. And were the balloons all manufactured? As designers, are you able to make as many different kinds of balloons as you want? Or are they all, are they uniformed? And is that part of it? Or are you even showing the balloons? I don't know. Yeah, I mean, the balloon is like they're trying, they're testing out like what's the best way to make the balloons. And then like, they're like some, the certain process, like how to make the balloons. Like they're layering a lot of Japanese paper and grueling with like what is, what's kind of gruel. It's like a blueberry paste. Yes. So when it's dry, it makes like really hard. So, so like, I, like, there is like the prototype of the balloon. And then like, they made, like, it transformed the school in Japan into the factories. And then so many Japanese guard students, they're like making the paper balloons. So that's like, I imagine like, this is in my fantasy version of it all. They're like, Oh, arts and crafts, we get to make all these balloons, right? They don't know what it's for. But there's like, we're making lots of balloons that everyone gets to be different. Or they're like, no, the balloon has to be exactly like this. And here you're, you know, I mean, are there imagery? I'm sure there's some photos of these balloons, right? Yeah. Yeah. It's like a huge balloon. Like it's really like, I, it's, it's like, kind of, I can't believe that big balloon. It looks really perfect. Like, you know, sphere balloon. It's like made by like a people's hand. Yeah. And then, yeah, as same as the, the Oregon's family, the kids got killed by balloon. In Japan, we are focused on like the guard student who is making balloon. They like, I think when we watch the documentary, like some of them knows what to make, what, what they are making. And some of them like really ambiguous what they're making. Like they told, it's a secret weapon. Don't tell anybody. But some of them like knows like this is a special weapon. So like, they're very proud of themselves to work for like Japan, like work for the infillar. So there are so many complicated like feelings in the teenage guards. So that's where kind of emerging and then making the, you know, the one of the scene of the show. And then the theatricality, Taylor, like what you mentioned is, is that's been part of the fun and the challenge is figuring out how do we, how do we fill the space? How do we feel 9,000 balloons? How many, how many balloons do we have to see for us to believe it's 9,000? Are they, can we get away with flat paper? Do they need to be spherical? You know, like all of these questions we've, we've blown up thousands of, you know, like latex balloons and filled the room. We've, we've gotten some giant weather balloons and played with those. We've, the versions of balloons right now that we're, that we're experimenting with are light up. Kind of kind of, we've added this kind of light up low from the, from the inside, almost like a lantern. But it's been a, it's been a really fun design challenge to figure out what, how much do we need to show? How much can we get away with? And now that we're going virtual, there's going to be entire scenes that, that we're going to be able to shoot from the balloons point of view, bird's eye view, looking down. So it's been a fun, it's been a fun challenge. Wow. So, so you're making the, you're, you're making this show for a virtual audience, but, but then also for a live audience in November. Is that the, yeah. So the hope is, the hope is we'll be performing it live. We'll both be in the space performing it live there at here. And it'll go out to a virtual audience, but they will also have a small group of people, or at least this is the plan right now, right? If it can be, if they have, is to have kind of VIP behind the scenes, seating their live. So, so people can see how we're doing everything with all the different puppet setups, all the different camera setups. It'll all be mixed and engineered. They're live on site. So that's kind of like a scenes experience. Yeah. And so I know that a lot of the black and white, well, this is what you said in the, in the description that black and white photography is inspired some of the aesthetic of this and also Japanese wood prints. And, and so I'm just wondering a little some of the imagery that I've seen is been used black and white imagery and I'm wondering, what is the difference between black and white on a stage in a live performance as opposed to in a photograph and how do you transfer that. And, and then when you're making a virtual show, of course, then it becomes maybe easier, but maybe harder because it's a live performance. So those are all the technical weird things that I'm curious about. That's a great question. We, I mean, I think we were excited initially about, first of all, that kind of black and white sets you in a specific time period, right? Or it gives the audience cues to maybe where this story is taking place, the juxtaposition, going back to that juxtaposition of these two kind of this black and white, this color scheme, this like floating beautiful white object and then the black death that it's carrying. You know, it felt like black and white was an opportunity to lean into those, to all of these juxtapositions. Our grandfather's being enemies, us being friends, those kind of things. But then, but then I'd say now, Michael, I feel like it's growing so much due to Michael's design and her sensibility. I feel like I feel like we're definitely like kind of fleshing out the world in a, especially one thing we've been considering is what does Japan feel like and what does America feel like. So as our balloon, we travel the journey of, you know, like of one balloon. And so when we, our storytelling in Japan feels very compact and specific and tight and that's based on Michael's experience and our director IA's experience. And then as the balloon crosses over the Pacific Ocean, you know, everything opens up visually and gets much wider and broader. And then, and then the United States, it becomes even, there's even more distance between, we're kind of leaning into like the Americana, the planes, that kind of space that you could see if you were a balloon traveling. So, I mean, as puppeteers, I feel like the coloring of the world is a huge opportunity for us. But then to the virtual aspect, we're still figuring it out. It's going to be really interesting to see like how what we've built already will translate to camera and where we're going to need to boost things or take things away. Yeah. And how are you working, Michael? How are you, how are you, do you make it home? Do you, do you just build it at home or do you, so you don't have a studio but that you built? I do have a studio so I'm working in my studio and at home at the same time. But for this project, it's because I'm in New York and Spencer in Kansas. So, we literally have the distance and so the things we have been doing is like making the storyboards or animation versions of the storyboards or we even make the mock-up like the toy theater, all the toy theater like this tiny like model of the toy theater, like especially about the Garza students scene. And then we just like meeting in the Zoom and then so here I made an emerging like how the show would be, what do you think, that kind of things like we've been doing. It's been really hard. You know, it's been incredibly difficult. We had all this momentum. We did this great live in-person workshop at the Henson Carriage House space in March like days before, you know, everything shut down. And so we had all this momentum going and now we've had to, you know, we've had to meditate for an entire year. I know. Exactly. But I imagine that working with a lot of paper, right? You're working with a lot of paper. And my experience working with paper is there's means you have to constantly be built even as you're performing, even as you're rehearsing, you're just rebuilding, rebuilding, rebuilding. Is that true or are the structures that you're working with solid enough that you can reuse the same thing over and over? So I would say it's kind of hard to, like, reuse. So it's kind of based on my courage work. So it looks like a two-dimensional and then using the cardboard stuff as well. But at the same time, we were thinking how to transform, try how to make the two these collage artworks in the 3D, you know, the space. So that's, so we need, like, certain friends and, like, it looks too deep but, like, also it's, like, needed to, like, visit, like, the structure. So it's kind of back and forth. Yeah. We try to be, you know, because as a puppeteer you can spend all your time building things and neglect other parts of your process. So we've been trying to be super specific and really do detailed storyboards so we know exactly what we do need to build and what we don't. With the knowledge that then once we get in the space, we'll discover things and things will get scrapped or combined. But yeah, one thing we're excited about in the virtual space is that we only have to fill the screen, right? Working in here, even though here's a small intimate space, we love playing with scale. And so we were building these giant cardboard heads and giant cardboard hands and all these things that, you know, take up storage and transportation and, like, all the things that are practical as a theater maker drive you crazy. And so we are excited to scale down for virtual space, but still be able to push into the frame to hope to get the feeling of that, the flight and expansiveness. So, yeah, it's a great process. Well, in kind of keeping with the storyboarding, what is the Japanese ghost story still part of this? Is that kind of what you're doing, telling a ghost story to some degree? Yeah, so the ghost story. I don't think we're like using that ghost story. Yeah. I just love that because it's the thing I hate most about writing a grant or an application is, you know, you write the description before you've made it. Like people bring it up for the rest of your life with the project. Like, okay, well, look, 10 years ago, and I wrote that. But it's interesting to hear, you know, how a piece transforms. Yeah. Can we watch a little sample? Can we see something? Sure. Yeah. All right. Yeah, why don't you set it up? Tell us what this exactly was, what stage it was coming in. So, so far, we had like three walking progress shows, a full walking progress show. The first car jammer, and then a little experimental walking progress at the years, the DOT downstairs theaters. And then we had a short walking progress at the Dixon Place, and then we had like a second car jammer 2019. So we have like a four different walking progress and we, we are trying like a different approach for each walking progress to figuring out what we need and then how to develop the first one. So you will see the differences, even though we're like based on the same story. And then, like, at the end, like, just a little creep for the tiny mock-up, the guard's story we were making during the pandemic. So, again, I'm going to share my screen. Several branches of Japanese military hopes, a co-group meeting, where they brainstorm ways to attack the United States. One scientist, a meteorologist, stands in the head. Dixon, where are you? I'm waiting for you. We have a show tonight at the Dixon Place. Tonight at Dixon Place, I thought I was going to tell the 18th. What? Tell them the history. I can give them the prologue, okay? Are you ready? I'm sorry, but it's going to be great, okay? It's extraordinary. And what I love about them, I've never seen a work sample like that, where you show the process in various videos. It really gives people a sense of how long it takes to make something and how you're experimenting. It's a great work sample. Oh, thank you. And beautiful imagery, especially at the end there, with where you guys are right now. Aw, thank you. It's so fun to see just the ideas that stick, right? Over four years, like the cardboard phone, and there's a few kind of like tent poles that we found. Like, oh yeah, no matter what, we'll have a version of this, this, and this in there. So it's fun to look back and see how much it's grown. And are either of your grandfathers still alive? My grandfather passed away almost seven years ago. Yeah, but the thing is, my solo performance is always I wearing my grandfather's face. It's not because he passed away. Like I start making my puppetry show wearing his face, like a year, two years before he passed away. And then I even ask him if I can use his face and he said no. But I use it. But you did it anyway. That's an artist for you. He's very difficult to stop on Japanese grandfather. He hates America so much. He was so disappointed I come to U.S. But yeah, but he care about me a lot. And then he's very happy to hear like I have a lot of friends here. But he never want to visit me in U.S. So he's how he like have the trauma for America is that much. And also Spencer's grandfather is still like he's 92? Yeah, 96. Oh, my God. He's still he's doing great lives in Iowa. And he I've actually interviewed him and recorded our conversations about the kind of the time period. And we had we had conversations about the Japanese internment. And we're we we're hoping I'm hoping to be able to include more and more of his story. And he wrote this great biography just for our family of his stories in listening. He enlisted just a few months after Pearl Harbor. And so he's got these. He's got his his biography of all these things that happened. So we've been weaving those into the narrative as well. And then and then part of our show part of this collapsing of distance. Imagine what if what if Ocean, Michael's grandpa, we're able to meet Papa Jim. What you know, what would happen then so we've had fun. It's been fun to kind of smash these two worlds together and to imagine that they that they would meet in some way. Yeah, yeah. Thank you so much for talking to us. It's such a wonderful project. And when it's June actually have dates to know exactly when it's hopefully when this goes up. We maybe in the chat or something we can put up the actual dates we I think November. I think it's I think we're pretty sure it happened in November that they're at here and then and then virtually. Okay. All right. Yeah, hopefully people can check back in. Awesome. All right. Thank you so much. I can't wait to hang out in person. Yes, that's great. Thank you so much. Thank you.