New Village Arts Launches World Premiere of 'Desert Rock Garden'

From '5 plays to see in San Diego in February' (KPBS feature)
New Village Arts (NVA) will open Roy Sekigahama's new play, "Desert Rock Garden" on Feb. 19, which will mark the 80th anniversary of executive order 9066 — the 1942 directive to create what we now know as the Japanese incarceration camps.

Sekigahama's play was written for NVA's 2019 Final Draft New Play Festival, and this will be its world premiere. It's set in 1943 and follows an orphan and an older Japanese immigrant who met in the Topaz War Relocation Center in central Utah. Topaz held more than 11,000 people, and the dry, high desert conditions were harsh. Fuzzy (played by Lane Nishikawa) and Penny (played by Chloris Li) build a friendship in the inhospitable-in-many-ways setting.

NVA executive artistic director Kristianne Kurner said in an announcement that this play also marked the company's first National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) grant. The production is directed by Yari Cervas.
—Julia Dixon Evans, KPBS

From NVA:
Note: This production has been postponed until Feb. 19, 2022. (Low-cost previews run Feb. 11-18).

New Village Arts, North County's cultural hub, is hosting the world premiere of "Desert Rock Garden", a memory play about belonging, family, and creating something beautiful out of nothing.

About the play: This fictionalized historical story about a young orphan and a Japanese immigrant who forge a friendship in the Topaz Relocation Center in 1943 reveals the inherent human ability to transform nothing — loneliness and barren desert — into something long-lasting and precious. February 19, 2022, marks the 80th Anniversary of Executive Order 9066 resulting in the forced removal of 120,000 men, women and children of Japanese ancestry to incarceration camps across America.

You can enjoy the play from Feb. 19 through Mar. 13, 2022 at the New Village Arts Theatre. See full schedule.

Get tickets here.
Admission starting from $16 - $52.

For more information, please visit newvillagearts.org/season-pass/desert_rock_garden or call (760) 433-3245.