L.A. Theatre Works has released an audio theater recording of “Innocent When You Dream” by Ken Narasaki.
The newest addition to the company’s Civil Liberties podcast series, “Innocent When You Dream” is now available for digital download for $4.99 at latw.org.
L.A. Theatre Works senior producer Anna Lyse Erikson directed Kurt Kanazawa, John Miyasaki, Suzy Nakamura, Rosie Narasaki, Sharon Omi, Sab Shimono, Greg Watanabe, and playwright Ken Narasaki in the story of Dan Yamada, a Nisei man now in his eighties who has suffered a devastating stroke. In a semi-comatose state, Dan reaches into his memory to recall the woman he fell in love with while in a wartime concentration camp — and to try to understand why she couldn’t love him back.
Winner of the Kuma Kahua Pacific Rim Playwriting Award, the play is titled after a Tom Waits song.
“The feeling of the song, which starts in a bar — the feeling of regret and longing and sadness at the end of one’s life — fueled the play,” Narasaki explained in an interview. “When I was writing the first scene, I was listening to the song thinking, ‘This is what the play is about.’ ”
The L.A. Theatre Works Civil Liberties Collection is sponsored by the California Civil Liberties Public Education Program, a state-funded grant project of the California State Library.
L.A. Theatre Works stands apart in its approach to making great theater widely accessible and affordable, bringing audio recordings of plays into the homes and classrooms of millions of theater lovers, teachers, and students each year.
The company’s syndicated audio theater series broadcasts weekly on public radio stations across the U.S. (in Southern California, on KPFK 90.7 FM); can be downloaded as a podcast via Apple Podcasts, NPR One, or wherever you get your podcasts; and can be streamed on-demand at latw.org.
The L.A. Theatre Works catalog of nearly 600 recorded plays is the largest archive of its kind in the world.
AudioFile magazine calls L.A. Theatre Works productions “the gold standard for fine audio theater recordings.”