Set in 1954 in a Puget Sound community divided among fishermen and farmers, whites and Japanese, SNOW FALLING ON CEDARS is at once a courtroom drama, a mystery, a love story and, in flashbacks, a social history freighted with the angry residue of World War II and the exclusion of Japanese Americans.

LOCAL HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 

The exclusion began on Bainbridge Island on March 30, 1942, when 227 men, women and children - two-thirds of them American citizens - were removed from their homes by U.S. Army soldiers and sent to relocation camps in the California desert.

SNOW FALLING ON CEDARS explores the themes of history, intolerance, exclusion, and community. Director Kate Carruthers says, "If we don't repeat these stories, we forget. The theatre is where stories are meant to be shared, and the best theatre grows out of the experiences of the originating community." 

Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson | Adapted by Kevin McKeon and Book-It Repertory Theatre | Copyright © 1994 by David Guterson. The play is performed through arrangement with Georges Borchardt, Inc., for David Guterson. All rights reserved. FIRST COMMISSIONED, DEVELOPED AND PRODUCED IN THE "BOOK-IT STYLE"™ BY BOOK-IT REPERTORY THEATRE (Founded in 1990 in Seattle, Washington - www.book-it.org).