OTTO'S INFERNO A PLAY BY JIM LAWRY FOR MANHATTAN THEATER CLUB DECEMBER, 2013 James Lawry Box 268 Inverness, Ca 94937
[email protected] 415-663-8004 OTTO'S INFERNO A Play By Jim Lawry For ABBEY THEATER December, 2013.
[email protected] OTTO'S INFERNO PREFACE How did Otto's Inferno begin? I was born in San Francisco in 1940. At seventeen I met a victim of Hiroshima and wrote a poem about her. In the sixties after living in Scotland and Germany I learned of the Allied Gomorrah raids on Germany in 1945 when at the close of the war, heavy bombings destroyed mostly civilian populations in an already devastated country. Misuse of overwhelming power has since become a major theme in my writing. The British Gomorrah raids on Hamburg are the subject of my play, Dropped. HIROSHIMA Saturdays we fished together on Crissey Pier. She was Japanese or Chinese, maybe Korean. I was too young to know. I loved her. Loved how she threw out her crab net, how she sang, how she looked at me, how she watched the sea. We walked home together Past the Palace of the Legion of Honor, a gift to San Francisco on an ancient Potter's field. "I think I want to have you." (MORE) 2. HIROSHIMA (CONT'D) "I should like that. But my breasts? I've had surgery." "Why?" "Hiroshima." "I'm sorry." We walked home through the Cypresses, the Eucalyptus. Potters field again. Slow. She didn't fish the next Saturday. Or the Saturday after that.