To view the production playbill, please click HERE.
The play “A Thousand Cranes” tells the true story of Sadako Sasaki, who was 2 years old when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. The story tells of how Sadako got sick and eventually died, but before doing so, she began to fold origami cranes, because in Japanese culture, the paper cranes signify long life, good fortune, and wish fulfillment, and Sadako wished desperately to be well again and to rid the world of nuclear weapons and to have world peace. She thought if she folded 1,000 cranes, her wish would have to come true. Sadako died before she could reach her goal, and the play ends there; however, in real life, her friends fulfilled her goal and completed not only her 1,000 cranes, but many more, and a peace memorial was built in Hiroshima in Sadako’s honor. To this day, people from all around the world fold paper cranes and send them to the Hiroshima Children’s Peace Monument to honor Sadako and her wish.
Through the process of this play, our kids also folded cranes, which we used in the setting, and we also put a call out to the community, and we had several folks fold cranes for us. By the play’s end, we had over 1,750 paper cranes that we sent off to the Children’s Peace Monument from the Children of FCT!
