A free staged reading of Atomic Lullaby, a play by Knoxville Poet Laureate Linda Parsons, will take place this Sunday, Nov. 2, at 2 p.m. at River & Rail Theatre (111 State St.). Kevin Collins directs a great cast: Caroline King, Deanna Surber, Raine Palmer, Abigail McCarter and Caleb Burnham. We asked Linda to share the story of the play and its historical context in her own words.
Like most plays, Atomic Lullaby had a long and winding road of development. It tells the true and imagined story of an uncle who served in the US Navy in postwar Japan and brought a Japanese wife and daughter home to Knoxville, with all of the surrounding prejudice you might imagine in the late 1950s.
I can’t say exactly why I came to write it, only that when pondering their story in late 2019, I realized the 80th anniversary was approaching in 2025. Once I began researching the tremendous war effort in the “Secret City” of Oak Ridge, the young women who came from farms and towns to join the Manhattan Project, and the horrific effects of the atomic bombs dropped on Japan in 1945, I was driven to create a story both local and global that resounds as much in the current day as in the period depicted.
Oak Ridge wasn’t even on the map as the great war machine geared up and chugged night and day to enrich (separate) the uranium that fueled the first bomb, Little Boy, dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, and to provide some of the plutonium used in Fat Man for Nagasaki on August 9. The workers just called the manufactured town “Dogpatch,” most of them having no idea what they were building, only that their work on “the Product” or “the Gadget” was helping to end the war. Secrecy infused every waking moment, and even husbands and wives weren’t allowed to discuss their work with each other.
I set the play in Oak Ridge for maximum drama, with the mother and aunt of the returning sailor being former calutron girls on the Project. And even though my cousin is very much alive, I created the young couple’s daughter as an unborn presence who acts variously as narrator/master of ceremonies/historian, representing the casualties of war and bringing its scars up close and personal for every character. She is surreal, miscarried before her parents married, there and not there, a catalyst propelling the action ultimately toward hope and reconciliation. As I wrote and revised the play, it was clear that I was creating a vessel for both grief and healing, something we all need these days, whether within or outside of ourselves.
Everyone in the play has lost someone in the war, and the young Japanese woman, Kiku, has lost her entire family. The central question becomes: Can sworn enemies form a family? As secrets are unearthed, the connections deepen between the women when they come to understand that loss is universal, especially the loss of parents and children. Such connections have the power to move us and change long-held beliefs. This is the power of live theatre: to entertain, but also to transform. Atomic Lullaby is both timeless and timely as we all confront our fear and sometimes disdain of “the other,” as we determine how best to live our lives together in acceptance and peace.
I’m very grateful the Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance (OREPA) is sponsoring the staged reading, as we observe the 80th anniversary of the dropping of atomic bombs on Japan. After the reading, a panel of experts will discuss the mythology regarding the use of atomic weapons in light of current research. The panel will also address the long-term humanitarian effects of nuclear weapons development, use, misuse, and proliferation—which is increasing around the world. So beyond the questions of the play itself, our aim and prayer are that such weapons should never be used again.
Atomic Lullaby was first read as part of Clarence Brown Theatre’s Marian Brown’s Circle series in 2023 (with a different title), where the audience was completely engaged and interested in the characters and their very human struggles. When I began, I envisioned a full production with educational outreach to students and the citizens of both Knoxville and Oak Ridge. A production that I believe can change minds and hearts and bend the arc of our future toward reconciliation.
Linda Parsons is the Poet Laureate of Knoxville, the poetry editor for Madville Publishing, and the copy editor for Chapter 16, the literary website of Humanities Tennessee. Her plays have been produced by Flying Anvil Theatre, Maryville College, Tennessee Wesleyan University, and Western Carolina University.
