jumpy officials in yokohama had to apologize after accidentally tweeting that north korea had launched a missile. north korea itself seems to be living on another planet. people dancing in the streets, a state-sponsored mass waltz, even as the government said the situation is inching toward thermonuclear war. >> north korea has been with its bellicose rhetoric, with its actions, skating very close toward a dangerous line. >> reporter: analysts say north korea may be trying to deliberately drag this out. this is its moment the time to show the world it's armed and dangerous, more than just a small dictatorship locked away with sanctions and ignored. north korea has hijacked the world's attention, but why does it matter if they test a missile or not? because they have nuclear weapons, and they're threatening to use them. the u.s. has been forced to react, canceling a missile test of its own, moving warships to the region but still unable to deter pyongyang. other states with nuclear programs, particularly iran, are taking note. >> what north korea teaches us is that once a rogue regime h

so how do you go about creating specific voices for a jewish russian character by way of yokohama, for an african american character, for all these different characters? i know you worked with specific actors. did they help at all? what was the process there? . >> absolutely. in terms of the african american characters, i wrote this piece initially for the act core company and i thought it would be a great challenge to actually write a play for the core company and the core company has two african american characters and i had tailored two of the characters for steven anthony jones and gregry wallace. it's interesting that gregory wallace, an african american man, was supposed to play mr. oge, an excentric neisei who likes literature. i thought it would be an interesting thing to do. but after a while we did a reading and we realized as good an actor as gregory is, it was pushing his limits for him to play a japanese american character in the late 40's. >> i imagine him as being much older. >> in the course of writing the play and using various actors, he became younger. this chinese a

american, three, rather, but there are african american characters, there's a russian jew by way of yokohama and i don't necessarily have those backgrounds. so in the workshop process, what it allows me to do to work with actors, particularly some of the african american characters, i can work with them to make sure the characters i am developing have a authentic, you know, authenticity to them and that they are from the inside out as opposed to sort of working from the outside in. so, for me, those kinds of things are critical so i spent a great deal of time making sure that the characters that were wrought that you will ultimately see on stage are truthful, are grounded in real life. so over this period of 3 1/2 to 4 years it was time well spent and it continues to be developed even as we speak. i'm going to go home and do some more rewriting after this. so it's still being worked on. >> so let's talk a little bit about the inspiration for the play. i mean, i've seen from reading different things about you that your productions or your plays have been inspired by very diverse things. for e

this is the city government yokohama japan jumping the gun.y sent out this emergency tweet today telling thousands of people the north koreans had already launched a missile. the emergency statement saying it was prepared ahead of time, but somebody in their crisis management center sent it by mistake. city officials pulled it just a few minutes and followed it up with this apology. >> no kidding. it reads this "we will further look into why this kind of thing happened, and we will make sure there will be no recurrence." many, many people in asia of course jittery today. why wouldn't they be, living within missile range of north korea. that's a heck of a mistake. >> and tonight at 6:00 eastern our colleague wolf blitzer, he's going to devote an entire hour to the crisis in north korea. you're going to want to tune in to a special edition of "the situation room" and it starts at 6:00 p.m. eastern. >>> get this, the u.s. thanking cuba for turning over two american fugitives. john and sharon hakken booked into a u.s. jail today. the couple kidnap

jim, we've seen reports that officials in the japanese city of yokohama mistakenly sent out a tweet today had, indeed, launched a missile. the tweet was then withdrawn. but it's an indication, is it not, of how high tensions are running? >> reporter: martin, i think it's an indication, it's a sign of the per ills, if you will, of the age of social media where every mistake you make can go viral. yes, i take your point. despite the calm kind of business as usual demeanor that you see still, despite all this other stuff going on here in the south, and even with north koreans, there is tension. among the armed forces, the national security forces, and especially in japan. which has already lived through one near miss by a north korean missile a few years back. the japanese are taking this very, very seriously. they've installed three patriot anti-missile batteries around tokyo. they say that they will shoot down any missile, even a piece of debris from a missile that enters japanese air space. tension is rising here in the south as well, martin. dozens of police s.w.a.t. teams have now fanne