Actor George Takei will make his London stage debut at the age of 85.
Best known for his role in “Star Trek,” Takei will take to the stage for a limited time in the UK in 2023 for “George Takei’s Allegiance,” a Broadway musical inspired by his real-life childhood experiences.
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George Takei Announces ‘Faithful’ UK Premiere: ‘Life Is Amazing’
I am 85 years old. And I will be making my London stage debut in my legacy project, Loyalty, in January. Life is truly amazing.
— George Takei (@GeorgeTakei) October 1, 2022
On Saturday, October 1, the “Mulan” voice actress took to Twitter to promote the UK premiere of her legacy project, “Allegiance.”
“I’m 85 years old. And I’ll be making my London stage debut in my legacy project, Allegiance, in January,” he said. tweeted. “Life really is amazing.”
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He followed that with a link for fans in the UK to buy their tickets to see the show, which only runs for 13 weeks: from January 7, 2023, to April 8, 2023.
Although he was born in California, his parents were Japanese-American immigrants. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor during World War II, Takei and his family were placed in an internment camp with over 100,000 other Japanese Americans.
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He spent his formative years growing up at Camp Rohwer in Arkansas and Camp Tule Luke in northern California. After the war ended, he and his family were allowed to return to Los Angeles, where he was born.
To shed light on this dark period of American history, Takei created the Broadway musical, “Allegiance,” in which he starred alongside Lea Salonga and Telly Leung in its 2012 world premiere at The Old Globe Theater in San Diego. The show has won multiple awards and had a limited run on Broadway from 2015 to 2016.
‘Loyalty’ Based on Takei and His Family’s Experience Growing Up in a Japanese Concentration Camp
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According to Broadway World, the UK performance will be choreographed by Tara Overfield. “Glee” star Telly Leung will also join George Takei on stage. According to the synopsis:
“‘The Loyalty of George Takei’ tells the moving story of Sam Kimura (Takei) as he is brought back nearly six decades as his younger brother (Leung) and older sister Kei struggle to stay connected to their heritage, their family and themselves after Japanese Americans have been wrongfully imprisoned during World War II. A powerful story told with great resonance and intimacy, ‘George Takei’s Loyalty’ explores the bonds that bind us, the struggle for survival and the incredible power of forgiveness and, above all, love.”
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The UK production of the show will also feature music supervision and orchestration by Andrew Hilton and Charlie Ingles. Lighting design was created by Nic Farman, sound design was developed by Chris Whybrow, and Sarah Leung Casting was responsible for casting the production.
During a 2019 Q&A with GQ, Takei opened up about the anti-Asian sentiment that had arisen in the public before the bombing of Pearl Harbor. “There are radio shows, movies, and dramas that characterize Japanese-Americans as bloodthirsty or villainous or inscrutable,” he explains. “In fact, it was a word used by a California attorney general who later became a historic American.”
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“The camp we are in is a detention camp. If you look the word up in the dictionary, the dictionary definition is a gathering of people of a common heritage, race or belief for political purposes. Some are immigrants, but we are Americans who were born here,” he continued. “My mother was born in Sacramento, California. My father is a San Franciscan. They met and married, and my brother and sister and I were born in Los Angeles. We are Americans.”
“But suddenly, because we happened to look like the people who bombed Pearl Harbor, we were concentrated together with other Japanese-Americans from up and down the West Coast: 120,000 of us in a barbed-wire prison camp guarded by the US military in guard towers with weapons aimed at us,” he added. “That was a concentration camp.”
“Japanese-Americans are in internment camps. Separated children from Latinos fleeing violence and poverty are in concentration camps. Jews who were concentrated by the Nazis were in death camps or extermination camps,” he explained. “So we have to recognize each person for what they are, and each is a terrible horror inflicted on another human being.”
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
