America’s great reckonings continue. The late-blooming LGBTQ activist and Trekkie icon George Takei (a/k/a Ikaru Sulu, helmsman of the USS Enterprise) bears witness to a legacy of national shame in Lost History: A Memory, drawn from his personal recollections as a Japanese-American “enemy alien” in World War II under Executive Order 9066. Though Takei’s family was held in Arkansas and California, the theme has local resonance: the Department of Justice ran a detention camp for designated Japanese-American “troublemakers” at Dalton Wells, 14 miles outside Moab. The narrative coexists with a commissioned score by Kenji Bunch, one of three Japanese-American composers on the program. The festival’s longstanding sales pitch “music in concert with the landscape” hereby takes on a whole new meaning. —M.G.
George Takei will narrate the work at its premiere performance at Moab. For further information, visit the Moab website.
