THE HIROSHIMA DAUGHTER By Robert Barnett To Have Private Industry Reading

The Hiroshima Daughter, a new play by Robert Barnett will have a private industry reading on Friday, June 7 at 3:00 p.m. at Pearl Studios - Studio 404 (500 8th Avenue). Interested industry professionals can email contact@visceral-entertainment.com for more information.

The Hiroshima Daughter picks up where the Oscar-winning blockbuster Oppenheimer ends, shifting the focus from the man responsible for the first atom bomb to one of its survivors. It's the 1950s. Roz, a crusading journalist, brings horribly scared Miyoshi, a young Japanese artist, to the U.S. for reconstructive surgery. Miyoshi becomes a media darling after Roz introduces her to the nation on the popular television program "My Three Wishes", but Brooks, a former diplomat and Roz's wartime lover, warns her if Miyoshi puts a face to the consequences of nuclear warfare, Washington could block Roz's fund-raising efforts to bring over additional young women disfigured by the bomb.

“The root of The Hiroshima Daughter was planted in me when I was a child and witnessed a terrifying animated short that visualized the consequences of a nuclear destruction on “The Ed Sullivan Show” of all places. The six-minute video dramatized a day when suddenly the world is incinerated in a flash, accompanied by wind, fire, and melting flesh”, said writer Robert Barnett. “Years later I was living in Philadelphia and went out for an early evening jog. I ran into a director friend, and she'd just read about The Hiroshima Maidens Project and described it with great interest. In that instant, an image of a woman, her face in bandages, refusing to let anyone take the bandages off her face flashed in my mind. I wrote The Hiroshima Daughter to find out why she wouldn't.”

Under the direction of Kimille Howard, the cast for the reading features Jack Berenholtz, Janie Brookshire, Paul L. Coffey (Fiasco Theater), Ryan F. Cupello (Dirty Dancing), Ethan Dubin (Shear Madness, Rancho Viejo), Torsten Johnson (Dying City), Kendyl Ito (Waitress, Matilda) and Gillian Williams. The stage manager is Rodrigo Herrera. General Management by Visceral Entertainment.

All actors are appearing courtesy of Actors' Equity Association.

About the Artists

Robert Barnett (Playwright). Mr. Barnett's work has been produced or developed at Yale Rep, Victory Gardens, Walnut Street Theater, Mark Taper Forum, Ashland New Plays Festival, the Sundance Playwrights Lab, and the New York Fringe Festival. His plays include Sleeping With the Dead, A God By Another Name, One Good Tree, Colors at Sunset, Summer Crossing, The Hiroshima Daughter, Olympic Notions & Supply, and Symphony Pastorale. He authored the libretto for the opera Crazy Nora based on his radio drama. As Danceteller's Playwright-in-Residence, Mr. Barnett collaborated on Before Forever, a dance performance work that toured the U.S., Russia, and Lithuania. He is a graduate of the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale where he was a swimming, singing frog in the premiere of Stephen Sondheim's The Frogs.

Kimille Howard (Director) is a director, deviser, writer, filmmaker, an Assistant Stage Director at the Metropolitan Opera, Artistic Director of the Lucille Lortel Theatre's NYC Public High School Playwriting Fellowship, and a founder of the Black Diaspora Theatre Collective. Recent credits: The 2024 New Works Collective, Sanctuary Road, The Oscar Micheaux Project, Treemonisha, The Passion of Mary Cardwell Dawson, The Italian Girl, The Adventures of Honey and Leon, American Apollo, B.R.O.K.E.N Code B.I.R.D Switching, Quamino's Map, and more. She is a recipient of OPERA America's 2023 Robert L. B. Tobin Director-Designer Prize. www.kimillehoward.com.