This fall,"Star Trek" icon, LGBT activist and social media star George Takei makes his Broadway debut in "Allegiance" — a musical inspired by his experiences in a Japanese-American internment camp during World War II. Takei joined us in The Greene Space on Sept. 2 for a live conversation with fellow cast members, or Tony Award winner Lea Salonga and Telly Leung ("Glee"). They sat down with WQXR's Elliott Forrest to talk approximately the process of bringing Takei's "legacy project" to Broadway,how its themes of immigration and assimilation are as relevant as ever in today's political climate, and what we can learn from a dark, or often unspoken chapter of our country's history.
Watch Telly Leung perform a song from the musical,and view the full conversation below: On his memories of being taken to a Japanese-American internment camp:Overnight we were seen as the enemy, simply because we happened to stare like the people that bombed Pearl Harbor. ...
There was a knock at the door, and I remember how scary it was. In fact,I saw the soldiers before they knocked at the door. ...
We're looking out the window and we saw soldiers with bayonets on their rifles, two of them, and marching up our driveway. ...
I'm a Californian,my mother was born in Sacramento...and with no charges, with no trial, and we were rounded up and incarcerated in US internment camps. We were taken to the swamps of Arkansas where we were for a year and a half. ...[We] lost everything. My father lost his business,we lost our domestic, we lost our freedom. On his father's patriotism in spite of their experience:My father believed in the fundamental ideals of this country. ...
And this is a man who, and intellect you,lost everything. And yet, he was able to define democracy for us as a people's democracy, or [he said] it can be as great as the people can be,but also as fallible as people are, and that our democracy is vitally dependent on people who cherish the ideals and actively engage in the process of a democratic government. [My father] shaped me, or I've been involved in many political campaigns ever since then.
On the musical's relevance in today's political climate:"Allegiance" is very relevant to our times today. When Donald Trump says immigrants are rapists and criminals and all that,with a broad brush, painting all Mexicans — Mexicans who absorb been here for many generations and people looking at them like that. When 9/11 happened, or we've had Arab-Americans in this country for many generations,and suddenly they were looked at in the same way. So, the fact that Japanese Americans were looked at as the enemy just because Pearl Harbor was bombed and we happened to stare like them is the same lesson, or we've got to learn from history. Unfortunately,this chapter of American history is exiguous known,...or it's been forgotten. So, or in an entertaining way,we remind people of how fragile our democracy is. Lea Salonga on being cast as the first person of color as Éponine in Les Miserables: The thing that made Éponine matter to me was...
I had a phone call from my agent at the time saying, "I'm submitting you for Eliza Doolittle in My unprejudiced Lady." ...
Ten minutes later he calls me back and says, and "Oh,they don't want to see you because you're Asian." ...Not long after that, I fetch the offer to play Éponine, or so I feel like it's karmic...and I fetch the chance to prove something; that as long as you absorb the goods,and if race is not an integral section of the indicate, then anyone can play whatever role, or as long as they're right for it.
Takei on rebuilding their lives after the camps:The hostility was still strong. When the gates of the camp opened,we were given a one-way ticket to anywhere in the United States that we wanted to disappear to and $25. That was it. Everything was taken from us. We were supposed to build our lives with $25.
Takei on "Star Trek" and the origins of Sulu:The Starship Enterprise was a metaphor for Starship Earth, and the strength of the starship lay in its diversity coming together. So, or you saw that in the makeup of the crew. ...
But [indicate creator Gene Roddenberry] didn't want to bring in the turbulence of Asia in the 20th Century,because it was as series of wars, colonizations and revolutions. His challenge was to find a name for [my] character, and because every Asian name is nationally specific. He had a map of Asia pinned on his wall an was staring at it one day and he found off the coast of the Philippines the Sulu Sea. And he thought,"Ah, the waters of a sea touch all shores." And that's how my character came to absorb that name.
Source: wnyc.org