How many of us know about Gordon Hirabayashi…or for that
matter, about the WWII internment camps for American citizens of Japanese
ancestry? Hirabayashi said “no” to President Roosevelt’s order of internment,
all the way to the Supreme Court. (One hundred and twenty thousand
Japanese-Americans were incarcerated without due process.) The Lyric Stage is
presenting Hirabayashi’s remarkable story in HOLD THESE TRUTHS, written by
Jeanne Sakata, and playing through December 24th.
Sakata gives Hirabayashi an exquisite speech to open the
play, in which he quotes the famous credo, “We hold these truths to be
self-evident…” He then questions our tacit acceptance of the phrase: If such
incontrovertible truths exist, do they have the same meaning over time…are they
set in stone? Certainly, in 2017, truth is elusive, elastic and worst of all,
elective. Sakata’s play resonates like the Liberty Bell (if it still can ring),
with our despicable culture of racial injustice, not to mention our impending
constitutional crisis.
Director Benny Sato Ambush and company accomplish an
impressive coup: All the dialogue is spoken by Michael Hisamoto—as Hirabayashi—and as every supporting character, as well. None of the
secondary kurogos speak with their voices. In Noh Theater, these masked actors
“speak” through specific, gestural movement. (Choreography by Jubilith Moore.) In
traditional Noh, their gestures guide the principal character to understanding
and action.
When Hirabayashi refuses to follow his family to the camp, it
breaks his mother’s heart. A shrouded, masked Gary Ng (as mother) conveys every
ounce of her pain, by bending slowly, slightly toward the earth with crossed,
lowering arms. These secondary figures (the extraordinary Ng, Khloe Alice Lin
and Samantha Richert) provide pathos, humor and anguish solely with body
movement (and the expressive “language” of the Japanese fan.)
You quickly forget that Hisamoto is answering his own lines
with theirs, because the kurogos are reacting as if they themselves were
speaking. Curiously, they become a much more dramatic element than the main
character. Hisamoto conveys Hirabayashi’s astonishing resilience over forty
years of disappointment (reminding me of Voltaire’s CANDIDE) with his ever
present optimism.
Hirabayashi’s small victories burst onto Hisamoto’s face with
a joyous smile but the playwright doesn’t offer much chance for us to see his suffering.
She paints a sweeping overview of his life as if he never agonized over the
ordeals he must have endured. No, Sakata has him cheerfully trundling off to
jail, even requesting a longer sentence at one point. There is so much I wanted
to know about his heroic fight for justice but this is a different play, by
design.