AC Petersen and Jeremy Berdin to Present Operetta CURRENTS at McMenamins Anderson School

AC Petersen, librettist; and Jeremy Berdin, composer, will present an original live operetta, Currents, portraying a Japanese American family from Bainbridge Island 1937-1952, Wednesday, May 7, 7:00 pm at McMenamins Anderson School, 18607 Bothell Way NE, Bothell WA 98011.

Admission is complimentary; doors open at 6:00 pm for seating and food and drink purchase. The 7:00 showing will be followed at 7:30 by a panel with Q&A about the WWII incarceration of Japanese Americans set in motion by Executive Order 9066. Guest panelist Shigeru Nishida, incarcerated at age 12 in Heart Mountain, Wyoming during WWII. The work is performed in English, and will have projected supratitles / open captions.

Inspired by history, four vocalists portray the characters, from the 1937 departure of the young daughter of Mrs. Nakata on a ship to Japan where she is trapped during WWII and forced to work in Japan's "Balloon Bomb" factory, while the Nakatas are forced to leave their home on Bainbridge to be incarcerated at Minidoka, Idaho, at a War Relocation site. To prove his loyalty, the brother enlists in the US Army's secret Military Intelligence Service (MIS).

This impressionistic arc of songs reveals emotion and obstacles of family members torn apart by choice and by force while trapped on both sides of the Pacific Ocean during WWII, before a magical reunion on Bainbridge Island in 1952.

Librettist AC Petersen (she/her) is Nisei (second-generation Japanese American) who has had her multi-disciplinary dance/theatre works performed at On the Boards' Northwest New Works, Northwest Asian American Theatre, Powell Street Festival (Vancouver BC), Consolidated Works, Allegro! Dance, and Bumbershoot. Themes have included Japanese and Western tea traditions, immigration and sweatshops, Sumo, and Madeline Children's stories.

Composer Jeremy Berdin (he/him) is Yonsei (fourth generation Japanese American), and a Seattle-based composer who aspires to tell stories of joy and belonging, as well as uplift narratives from his AAPI heritage. His other works include the original musical, Buried Deep (with demos recorded with Gaisma Theatre Group), and contributions to the new musical, Paranoia (Harrisburg Fringe Festival). Jeremy's work will also be showcased as part of the Jane Lang Davis Creation Lab at Seattle Opera. Updates on his various projects can be found at JeremyBerdin.com.

The Post-performance panel will be moderated by Gail M. Nomura, Associate Professor Emerita of American Ethnic Studies at the University of Washington. A historian, her most recent publication is Our Voices, Our Histories: Asian American and Pacific Islander Women (Co-editor with Shirley Hune, NYU Press, 2020). She is a past president of the Association for Asian American Studies.

Panelists include Shigeru Nishida, who was twelve years old when he and his family, who were farming in the Yakima Valley, were sent to the Heart Mountain incarceration camp in 1942.

Currents, in its first draft, was performed at 18th and Union in Seattle during the 2024 Springshot Festival of works.

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