by Richard Lord

Every serious actor knows there is stage fright, and then there is deep-in-the-marrow dread. That latter fear comes mainly in special situations, such as when you’re performing a one-person show.

Many actors will even confide that they shun doing full-length monologues. The one-person show is like being out on a tightrope with no safety net. Yes, audiences will be greatly impressed if you’re able to pull off a success. But if you as the sole actor slip, if you draw a blank, if something goes wrong on the technical side, you’re out there all alone, like an astronaut floating in space with no one to save you but yourself.

Which is why audiences are especially appreciative of actors who manage to pull off a strong solo performance. Which is exactly what happened this past weekend when the audience at the People’s Light production of Jeanne Sakata’s Hold These Truths rose to its feet to give Steven Eng a standing ovation. Previous accounts indicate Eng was just as impressive earlier in this run.   

Hold These Truths would be a challenge for any actor. The piece focuses on the ordeals of Gordon Hirabayashi, a Nisei (second-generation) Japanese American who was just exploring his allotment of the American Dream when Pearl Harbor was attacked and his native country found itself in a major war with his ancestral nation.

There was no question of divided loyalties for Gordon, but that’s not how American authorities saw it. The vast majority of Japanese Americans were viewed as potential saboteurs and spies by their own government, and Gordon Hirabayashi and his family suddenly became suspects merely because of their ethnicity.

Following the Pearl Harbor attack and the declaration of war, fears of a possible Japanese invasion of America’s West Coast quickly poisoned the way many Americans viewed their fellow citizens who happened to be ethnic Japanese. The fact that most Japanese Americans were living in California, Oregon and Washington state only intensified those venomous fears. Two-and-a-half months after Pearl Harbor was struck, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, which allowed the government to impose a curfew of 8:00 p.m. on all ethnic Japanese in designated ‘military zones”. Those zones comprised most areas on the West Coast where Japanese had settled. The curfews were soon followed by orders that Japanese living on the West Coast should be removed from their homes (forcibly, if necessary) and relocated to special internment camps further east – as far east as Arkansas in some cases. More than two-thirds of the Japanese sent to these internment camps were US citizens, most of them natural-born citizens. But their citizenship didn’t protect them from the internment orders.

And those internment camps the Japanese Americans were sent to were nothing like the cushy prison camps to which America consigns many of its white-collar criminals. The wartime camps were rather bleak affairs, typically featured fences fringed with barbed wire and watchtowers where armed guards kept constant surveillance of the internees. In Hold These Truths, we’re told that one facility initially housed detainees in recently converted horse stalls, complete with the fragrances horse stalls are known for.  

Gordon Hirabayashi was one of those subject to these appalling measures. Early in his narrative, Gordon relates an old Japanese adage his father often repeated: “The nail that sticks out is the one that gets hit.” This was meant as a warning to the young boy of how important it was to conform – especially important for racial minorities.

The lesson did not quite stick. Hirabayashi, then a University of Washington student, defied, first, the curfew and then the relocation policy. For this, he was arrested and did jail time. But his problems didn’t end there. Hirabayashi had converted to the Quaker faith as a young man, so he duly registered for the military draft as a conscientious objector. However, C.O. status was denied him, and he served a further prison sentence for refusing induction. Kafka could written this story in one of his lighter moments.

Hold These Truths lets Gordon Hirabayashi provide the full story, and it is an engrossing tale from start to finish. Actor Steven Eng is able to keep it engrossing for the entire stretch.

The show opens with Eng stepping into flashing lights, suggesting photographers’ flash bulbs. We quickly learn that that’s just what the lights are; the flashing lights and the setting serve as the framing device for Hirabayashi’s story. Only as the play reaches its climax do we discover why this mild-mannered Sociology professor has drawn the pack of photographers and reporter some four decades after his ordeals as a second-generation Japanese in wartime America.

After that opening, the script flashes back to Hirabayashi’s youth in suburban Seattle, where he first experiences racial prejudice targeting him because of his Japanese heritage. (Both of his parents emigrated to the Seattle area from Japan.) Hirabayashi then guides us through his youth and teenage years, and into his time at the University of Washington. Then comes the outbreak of the war.

Playwright Jeanne Sakata was primarily known as a TV and big-screen actress when she came across the story of Gordon Hirabayashi. Sakata wrote that she was “enthralled – and shocked” by the story. She also wrote that she found the accounts “a life-changing experience”. Being Japanese American herself, Sakata was determined to turn Hirabayashi’s story into a stage play. It was to be her very first play.

Sakata’s script has gone through several permutations since 2007 when it first opened in Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo with the title Dawn’s Light. The reworking seems to have been much to its advantage: Jeanne Sakata’s script is now a tightly wrought, compelling recounting of Hirabayashi’s long journey to justice. She has Hirabayashi relate his tale in a well-paced and well-balanced manner. The writing is always crystal clear and at times deliciously lyrical. There are also dashes of humor which never seem out of place or forced in any way. For a first effort at playwrighting – even if somewhat revised – Hold These Truths is an impressive performance.

The mention of impressive performance brings us back to Steven Eng. The only person on stage in this production, Eng embodies Gordon Hirabayashi and also handles about three dozen other characters who played a role in Hirabayashi’s saga. These other slip-in, slip-out personae include Gordon’s parents, friends, his girlfriend and future wife Esther, US government officials and allies in his fight for justice. Steven Eng manages to handle all of these personalities in way that carried the narrative along smoothly. Never once does he turn these other characters into caricatures.

Eng’s handling of the text is, like the text itself, well-paced and precisely charged. We might even say that Sakata’s text works so well because of the way Steven Eng handles it. And it’s not only the delivery of the lines that bring out the richness of the script; Eng also uses his face well to serve as subtext to Hirabayashi’s twisting journey to vindication. For instance, the look on Eng’s face as he recounts the reversal of Gordon’s criminal verdict glows with a proud flash of triumph.

Good, precise direction is usually a necessary element in the success of a one-person show, and so Desdemona Chiang evidently deserves much praise for her part in making this production the success it is.

The set design (by Se Hyn Oh) and lighting design (by Dawn Chiang)  both tend towards the minimalist, which is actually fitting here as this allows the focus to stay fixed on the actor and his sterling performance.

Closing note:
As I was leaving the theatre, I started reflecting on the play’s title. Hold These Truths? Why not the whole four words from early in our Declaration of Independence – WE hold these truths? My first thought was that dramatist Sakata was trying to make the point that the “we” was not operative at that time for those who were relocated as the government had decided to exclude them from that “self-evident truth”.

But then it struck me that the title should perhaps be read another way, not with something missing, but with something included. If we take the title as being in the imperative voice, “hold these truths” becomes an exhortation, a call to embrace and defend the lofty ideals contained in that second paragraph of the USA’s founding document. In our own day, when those ideals are again being challenged, even denied, this play reminds us that such ideals are fragile and we must strive to see that the unalienable rights promised in the Declaration are not egregiously violated again.

As Gordon Hirabayashi says at the end of the play, “I seek to live as if the ought-to-be, is.” Ultimately, Hold These Truths asks us to assure that the ought-to-be applies to everyone and not just the selected and connected.

Hold These Truths runs until May 1 at People’s Light, 50 Conestoga Road, Malvern. Performances Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday at 7:30, Saturday at 8:00, Sunday at 2:00 p.m. The May 1 performance is currently listed as sold out, but you can still call (610-644-3500) to see if any seats become available.