TWO REACTIONS TO ‘IMAGINING A FUTURE’ AT TAPER : Program Brings Idea of Global Nuclear War Down to Scale

There’s a theory that the Mark Taper Forum’s job is simply to present good theater, of no particular kind. I hold that the Taper is most itself when serving precisely as a forum--a place where issues of private and public life are joined. Monday night’s “Imagining a Future” program wasn’t officially a Taper show--it was presented by the Hollywood Women’s Coalition and HOLLYWOOD FOR SANE--but it belonged there.

The issue was nuclear war, the occasion the 40th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. The evening went a step beyond a previous Taper show, “August 6, 1945,” by acknowledging from the beginning the basic problem in thinking about nuclear war: the fact that the mind shies away from doing so. As the cast of “Rap Master Ronnie” (all but Ronnie) sang: “Nuclear war . . . right. What was I thinking about?”

Nuclear holocaust is too big an idea to get a hold on. So this program brought it down to scale. The most indelible image, for me, was a sound: that of three beans dropping onto a metal pan. This represented the amount of firepower expended in World War II.

Then the darkened theater heard another sound: a bushel of beans being emptied from a sack. The clatter went on for 30 seconds . . . 40 seconds . . . 60 seconds. This represented the amount of nuclear firepower available today. If 60 seconds sounds small, time it on your watch.

Another sound was that of Kazu Matsui’s flute, entwined with memories of the Hiroshima bombing, the most powerful still being those that were compiled on the scene by John Hersey. But none of the words wrenched as deeply as the hollow tones of Matsui’s instrument, meditating on the shortness of life under any circumstance.

There was the sound of laughter, too: another way of bringing an issue down to a place where it looked you in the eye. For instance, Howard Hesseman assured us, on behalf of the nuclear power-plant Establishment, that if we knew all the facts, we wouldn’t indulge in “pre-worry” about there ever being another Three Mile Island disaster. Unfortunately, the facts were classified, but we could take his word for it.

The sketch was by Terry Parkinson, one of 20 or so writers represented. Arthur Kopit’s “The Choice,” read by Ed Begley Jr., wasn’t funny. This was about a new father who is suddenly struck with the realization that he has the power of life and death over his baby. Not that he would use that power, but. . . .

Again, it was a way of encapsulating another aspect of the issue, our unadmitted fascination with the forbidden image of nuclear apocalypse. This is something rarely acknowledged by people on either side of the nuclear issue, because it so clearly falls into the realm of the irrational.

But the irrational belongs in the discussion. Sensible beings would have destroyed these weapons years ago. An overwrought screed like Ellen Bass’ “I Want to Talk to the President”--Blythe Danner read it--is closer to reality than the “reasonable” language of the experts, who discuss kill rates as if talking about crop control.

Even when “Imagining a Future” went too far in the direction of emotionalism, as in its fairly hokey use of kids from the Young Actors’ Ensemble, it made its point. Tony Abatemarco was the director.