{"id":308,"date":"2021-11-14T23:51:59","date_gmt":"2021-11-14T23:51:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/performingartslegacy.org\/sakatajeanne\/?p=308"},"modified":"2022-03-14T11:36:49","modified_gmt":"2022-03-14T15:36:49","slug":"hold-these-truths-playwrights-statement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/performingartslegacy.org\/sakatajeanne\/hold-these-truths-playwrights-statement\/","title":{"rendered":"HOLD THESE TRUTHS\u2013A Playwright\u2019s Reflections"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\"\"\t<\/p>\n

I love this beautiful sentence by Lin-Manuel Miranda on why he wrote IN THE HEIGHTS, He said, \u201cI wanted to write what was missing.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

I am often asked what inspired me to write #HOLDTHESETRUTHS<\/a>. Lin\u2019s sentence says it perfectly. For many years, Gordon Hirabayashi\u2019s story was missing not only from the national American consciousness, but my own consciousness growing up in a thriving Japanese American community, and from any of my history books. With this play, I hope to join in filling that aching gap that so many AAPI artists are now filling with their own amazing, unique, powerful and unforgettable stories.<\/p>\n

PLAYWRIGHT\u2019S INTRODUCTION, HOLD THESE TRUTHS<\/strong>
\nWhen I first heard of Gordon Hirabayashi in the late 1990s, I was enthralled \u2014 and shocked. Shocked that I had never heard of his story before. Born and raised in a thriving Japanese American community in the Bay Area of California, I had studied Japanese American history as a college student and later became actively involved in the Asian American community as a theater artist.<\/p>\n

And yet Gordon Hirabayashi\u2019s fascinating story was entirely unknown to me. Gordon was only a 24-year old college student during WWII, when he had defied and legally challenged US government orders to mass incarcerate all people of Japanese ancestry on the West Coast without trial or hearing, including thousands of American citizens \u2014Americans like my own father and aunts and uncles and cousins, who, as children and teenagers, had been forcibly removed from their homes and schools, and penned up behind barbed wire during WWII.<\/p>\n

My family never spoke about those years, as it was such a traumatic experience. But as I grew up and became fully aware of what had happened to them, I absorbed that pain as well.<\/p>\n

So when I discovered Gordon\u2019s story in the late 1990\u2019s \u2013 so full of heartbreak, but also his irrepressible humor and zest for life \u2014 it was a life- changing experience. I knew I had to try to bring his story to the American stage, not just as an act of healing for myself, my family, and my community, but also to inspire and give hope to any American citizen who has been denied equal treatment under the law promised by our Constitution because of factors such as race, gender, sexual orientation, and who must battle constantly to make those promises a living reality.<\/p>\n

The more I researched the story, the more intrigued I became. I was fascinated by this unique, riveting and deeply American story, which I found both timely in its political significance, yet timeless in its spiritual themes. Here was an unassuming Japanese American Quaker college student, who took the words of the Constitution deeply to heart and attempted to reconcile its pronouncement that \u201call men are created equal\u201d with the ugly reality of his country\u2019s betrayal during WWII. And who, in so doing, embarked on a journey of spiritual enlightenment, full of unpredictable twists and turns as tragic and devastating as they were humorous and uplifting. <\/p>\n

I hope people will leave the play with a deeper, more personal sense of what the true meanings of patriotism and citizenship can be. I hope they will leave with a heightened recognition that our country\u2019s painful and torturous struggle to make the words of the Constitution a living reality depends on each of us making the Constitution \u201ca personal matter.\u201d But I also hope that people will come away quietly inspired by Gordon\u2019s story, with a sense of what true inner liberation of the spirit means \u2013 and with a renewed awareness that great leaps toward political liberation and spiritual enlightenment are made up of a thousand smaller steps of everyday individuals who simply and irrevocably decide to take a step in the right direction. <\/p>\n

Gordon\u2019s story is a vitally important American one that all of us can draw hope from, and his tenacious quest for freedom echoes those of all who hunger and fight for justice \u2014 who \u201chold the truths\u201d of the Constitution, and refuse to let go.<\/p>\n

Jeanne Sakata, Playwright, HOLD THESE TRUTHS<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I love this beautiful sentence by Lin-Manuel Miranda on why he wrote IN THE HEIGHTS, He said, \u201cI wanted to write what was missing.\u201d I am often asked what inspired me to write #HOLDTHESETRUTHS. Lin\u2019s sentence says it perfectly. For many years, Gordon Hirabayashi\u2019s story was missing not only from the national American consciousness, but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":277,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-highlight"],"metadata":{"_edit_lock":["1647272193:277"],"_edit_last":["38"],"_wpac_members_redirect_to":[""],"_wpac_show_in_search":["0"],"_wpac_show_excerpt_in_search":["0"],"_wpac_nonmembers_redirect_to":[""],"ase_chapter_enable_timeline":["off"],"ase_map_component_start_point":["a:2:{s:3:\"lat\";d:29.76;s:3:\"lng\";d:-95.38;}"],"ase_mapbox_style":["openstreet"]},"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nHOLD THESE TRUTHS\u2013A Playwright\u2019s Reflections - Jeanne Sakata<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/performingartslegacy.org\/sakatajeanne\/hold-these-truths-playwrights-statement\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"HOLD THESE TRUTHS\u2013A Playwright\u2019s Reflections - Jeanne Sakata\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I love this beautiful sentence by Lin-Manuel Miranda on why he wrote IN THE HEIGHTS, He said, \u201cI wanted to write what was missing.\u201d I am often asked what inspired me to write #HOLDTHESETRUTHS. 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