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AI: So, continuing on with your own development of your own performances and installations, you had quite a number over the years, that you had mentioned the "Trans-Siberian Excerpts" and the "California Sushi," but you also had a number of, "Return of the Yellow Peril," -- oh, I'm sorry, that was a different series, but your "Campfire Diary" tour and "Last Sansei Story" were significant performances and --

RS: Yeah. "The Last Sansei Story" was probably, oh, without question the most major piece that I've ever written. And I conceived of that just before, in 1990 when I went to Carleton College to teach for the semester. And it was also a time period that I developed very serious heart problems and it was very iffy on whether or not I could go to Carleton and teach there for the entire semester, no one was sure how stressful that that was going to be. But I sort of saw it in the opposite sense, that this would be a good place for me to get away and to recuperate, because all I had to do was teach performance art. That's what they were hiring me to teach. And I would only have to teach two afternoons a week. And besides that, they were paying me a lot of money. And so I convinced the doctor that he should let me go to Carleton to teach. So I spent almost two weeks in the hospital and then he let me out and one of my friends drove me up to Northfield and unloaded my van for me and everything, which I'm glad he did because I wasn't able to do it. I was too weak. And so I got it together to go to the very first class and I was able to handle it and actually found the exercise was good, walking to class and walking back. So over a period of about thirteen, fourteen weeks, however long it was, I actually returned stronger than I was.

But all during that time I was conceiving and writing this performance piece that, called "The Last Sansei Story." And what it was about was a tribute to the Issei, Nisei, Sansei. And I knew the Issei was going to be about the immigration to this country, it was gonna be seen through my grandmother's eyes and her diaries, that it would be about her midwifing experiences, it would be about, some things about my grandfather and to sort of hold them as kind of what happened to the Issei. And then the second act, which was about the Nisei, I decided to represent with the internment experience. And I also re-titled the second act as "Campfire Diary" and that became a remake of the "Kabuki Plays" in that I think I actually even covered the same diary entries in "Campfire Diary." But they were presented in an entirely different way. I decided to take that on the road under the name of "Campfire Diary." But in "The Last Sansei Story" it was just simply called "The Nisei." And then the third act was, of course, for the Sansei. And in there I would use my own life as sort of a model of certain things, interests that I had and certain other, broader issues, like the model minority and more autobiographical things like church dances, you know, at the different churches where I had this one girl in one of those '50s hair dryer things, and she had her, the thing blowing and it was like -- and then on there she had a church hymnal and she was singing "Holy, Holy, Holy," as there was a couple dancing to her singing this hymn. And the woman that was dancing, or the young girl that was dancing, was dancing with this inflated Superman. And she was dancing on the floor of the audience to Sonny James' "Young Love." And as she was dancing with this Superman there's a point where she unplugs him and the air starts coming out. And so, I saw this as sort of the emasculation of the white male, the occasional white male that would come to these Buddhist church dances or something. And the Superman just starts going down like this and fading like this. And so, by the time the song ends, he's just this limp blue and red figure in her arms as she's dancing with him. And she's wearing one of these middies. So there are a lot of little hidden sarcastic remarks that were being made all through the piece but it was, it involved about twenty-five people and they were all being paid, because at this point it was no longer an act of love. It just takes a certain amount of success and everybody thinks they're gonna make money from it. So I had to raise a lot of money and I got a National Endowment for the Arts grant, and I think the piece cost me about $25,000 to do.

MT: And where did you first perform that?

RS: We performed it twice, once was at Haskell in Lawrence, because I had all these people that were from Lawrence and I couldn't afford to fly them anyplace. So I did it at Haskell as part of the New Direction series which, which was sponsored by the university, and then took it to Kansas City and did it at a, one of the top venues there, and they were both a sell-out. Audiences, and it went, they both went really well. But, I swore I'd had it with any big productions after that. It was just exhausting, because I was still painting and I was still showing and doing all that and teaching full-time and lecturing, and all of that. So, that really consumed me for a period of maybe two to three years, from the time I wrote it to the time that I did it. Because when I was at Carleton I had started on a whole new series of paintings and, 1990 was a time of the failing U.S. auto industry, Vincent Chin, all of that, and I knew I wanted to do something about that, and so when I got back I decided to do a series of paintings where I would confirm America's worst nightmare and I would let Japan take over this country, like so many people were afraid of with the U.S. auto industry. And at the time they were worried because Japan was buying up Disneyland, all of these American --

MT: Rockefeller.

RS: Pardon me?

MT: Rockefeller.

RS: Right, Rockefeller Plaza and all these other things and so I decided I wanted to do something about this. So what I did was I confirmed America's worst nightmare and I took fifteen of my friends in Lawrence and "Japanized" them. In other words they, put them all in kimonos. And I did these big 5 x 5 foot portraits of these fifteen people. And, except each painting not only depicted them in a kimono but it also told a story about those people as individuals. And so I was very selective in terms of the people that I painted. And at the time I was living with this Iranian woman. And so I did a painting of her wearing this chador and fishing, because she loved to fish in the pond by our house. And I ended up, we, it was just always such a weird combination to think of this Iranian woman wearing this chador, fishing and catching a bass, and wearing this kimono, so it was all these mixed cultural things. Lucy Tapahanso, who's a Navajo poet, I did a painting of her dancing with these sort of dragons in her hand, wearing a kimono, and on and on. I did a painting of myself wearing a Carleton College T-shirt with a kimono and taking my blood pressure. Because when I was at Carleton I was taking my blood pressure every hour on the hour. And on the ground was a video camera, which symbolized the performance that I was teaching there and the script to "The Last Sansei Story," which I was working on.

<End Segment 57> - Copyright © 2003 Densho. All Rights Reserved.