Hiroshima Maiden


Dan Hurlin

Artist Bio

Hiroshima Maiden is inspired by the true story of the Hiroshima Maidens, a group of women disfigured by the nuclear blast at Hiroshima and brought to the United States for reconstructive surgery. The Maidens became celebrities in this country, appearing on the television show This is Your Life, where they met the pilot of the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. Hiroshima Maiden involves nine puppeteers and a complex set and continues Hurlin’s ongoing exploration of the different uses for sight. Inspired by the traditional Japanese form of Bunraku, Hurlin’s narrative style is evocative rather than linear. He focuses on a boy watching TV and flipping channels between This is Your Life and I Love Lucy. Live music for the work is created and performed by Robert Een.


Discipline
Puppetry
Award Year
2002
Status

Completed

Dan Hurlin

Dan Hurlin

New York, NY

Dan Hurlin has been creating original puppet theater since 1980. His work has been presented widely at such spaces as New York’s The Kitchen and Dance Theater Workshop; Minneapolis’ Walker Art Center; the Duke University Institute for the Arts; and the Flynn Theater for the Performing Arts in Burlington, Vermont. He has been awarded funding from the Greenwall Foundation, Art Matters, the Peg Santvoord Foundation, The New England Foundation for the Arts, and the NEA. From 1980–93, Hurlin was the artistic director of Andy’s Summer Playhouse in Wilton, New Hampshire, a program that facilitates creative collaborations between children ages 8-18 and internationally acclaimed artists.