Nothing stirs the emotions like a gripping true story. In "a Grain of Sand", a one-woman play, Nobuko Miyamoto chronicles her life to 1993 with the help of pictures projected onto a large standing round screen, sound recordings and various props such as original clothing and a colorfully decorated rain stick.

Miyamoto's varied life was strongly shaped during the Japanese internment of WWII. Miyamoto talks of her childish perplexity surrounding the internment. Her befuddled cries of "why are just the Japanese being interned? Why aren't the Germans being interned too?" were thought provoking indeed.

Miyamoto then speaks of the move to California to live with Uncle Fred after her internment experience. Uncle Fred was a gardener. According to Miyamoto, all Japanese men she met during this period were gardeners. It seems that while the Chinese were busy doing the laundry, the Japanese tended to the lawns.

Later, as a young adult, Miyamoto would embrace the world of entertainment getting stereotypic roles such as geishas and Chinese spies. It was during this period that Miyamoto, then known as Joan Miya began honing the skills of drama and song that she deftly displays in her current work.

One would have expected Miyamoto to continue on in the field of entertainment struggling to assimilate while simultaneously seeking her own identity, but no. The upheaval of the sixties with Black and Latino power struggles held a greater allure for her. Joan Miya became Nobuko Miyamoto, a friend of the Black Panthers as well as Latino and American Indian "subversives".

A pivotal time in Miyamoto’s life is told with pictures, taped speeches by Fred Hampton of the Black Panthers, song and oratory. Miyamoto goes further in describing her involvement in that turbulent time eventually intimating to the audience her shockingly unconventional tale of love with a Black man and the subsequent bearing of his child.

The play winds down in the early nineties, the scene of the torturous Los Angeles riots. Miyamoto recounts a very painful witnessing of the urban meltdown. The production ends with the repetitive recital of a salutation used by the Lakota Indian Nation. Miyamoto, while singing and tapping a metal Indian bowl which produces a gong-like sound that brings one into the now, induces the audience to chant along with her. All in the audience who participated were brought together as one to finish the play.

A message of Miyamoto’s is that we must all be proud of and willing to tell our own life story. We must open up our hearts and minds to the many races that make up this beautiful world. The message was related with poignancy in Miyamoto’s fine performance of "A Grain of Sand".

This play was three years in the making and has now been touring the country in its present form for approximately one year. In addition to the play, Miyamoto often holds a workshop which offers to help you find the voice to tell your story….