Broadway isn't perfect yet. I'm going to examine how new shows and musicals (particularly) are marketed compared to how movies are marketed by Hollywood and fully utilizing the communication medium of our time, social media. Broadway hasn't quite entered the 21st century. I'm forever identified with "boldly going where no one has gone before," that vision of our future. I'm going to persuade Broadway to fully utilize social media. Some of these new shows have to be running a long time before the general public becomes aware of it.

 

Hollywood builds excitement and anticipation long before it's released. I think Broadway needs to do that more because it's an investment of a lot of money as well as talent, time and energy. So many plays close early because they can't find their audience. It's so much better to invest a little energy and imagination in finding the audience before you open so they are there to sustain you until you find your audience.

 

Me: Some of the shows are starting to embrace social media. Once did a great campaign before it got to Broadway.

 

George: Yes they did. Allegiance, which is coming to Broadway next fall, used social media extensively for our run at The Old Globe in San Diego before we opened. We had an enthusiastic audience ready and waiting for us. When we opened, we opened to practically sold-out houses and after we opened, they became genuine sold-out houses, so much so, we had to turn people away. They extended our run by a week. We broke all attendance and box office records. That's what we intend to do with Broadway as well.

 

 

6. Speaking of Allegiance, what excites you about the show coming to Broadway? That I'm going to be making my Broadway debut! Right after I got my BA in Theatre (I have my Master's in Theatre as well), I lucked out and got cast in a civil rights musical in which the character was patterned after me. I was an activist in the civil rights movement, and the character was named "George." I played "George" in Fly Blackbird in Los Angeles for a year and producers from New York bought the rights to present it Off-Broadway. They told us if we came to New York and auditioned, we would be considered at the top of the list. Confident that we'd have almost a guarantee, more than a dozen of us flew to New York in the cold early December and and we auditioned at the Mark Hellinger Theatre (which is now a church). This was my first trip to the Big Apple. It was thrilling to audition for it, followed by the agony of waiting for two whole days, until the word came down that only one of us from Los Angeles was cast. And I wasn't the one. It was devastating. This was in December and it was cold, yet a magical place being right before the holidays, but that moment really made this a cold, heartless city. Ever since then, I've been determined to get on Broadway and next fall I will be.

 

7. Let's go back a little bit. How did Allegiance come to be? Allegiance was born in a Broadway theatre. Brad, my husband, and I went to the theatre one night and the house only had a sprinkle of people. Two guys came and sat in front of us. I was talking with Brad and one guy recognized my voice and turned around and said, "You're George Takei aren't you?" That was Jay Kuo, our composer/lyricist and Lorenzo Thione, our book writer and producer. We chatted for a while and then the play began. At intermission we chatted some more. The play ended and we went back home thinking they are obviously passionate theatregoers. The next night we went to see the Tony Award winning musical In The Heights, we took our seats and as we were doing so, there were two arms waving at us and it was Lorenzo and Jay. We waved back, the show began, and near the end of the first act the father sings "Inutil," (meaning useless). He wants to do so much for his daughter, who's a bright girl who wants to go to college, but he can't. For some odd reason that triggered in me my memory of my father in the internment camp and his anguish as he's faced with the loyalty questionnaire, which he explained to me when I was a teenager. That father's love for his daughter and his sense of hopelessness to really help her reminded me of my father. I don't sniffle; I ball (George demonstrates his crying). Tears were cascading down my cheek and of course intermission comes and the house lights come on and Jay and Lorenzo, with their smiling faces, come over to chat with us. Jay sees me wiping the tears off my face and I told him why and that was a brief intermission conversation. After the show we went out for drinks and we talked about my family background and decided to have dinner together and that is how Allegiance was born. Jay's music is transporting. Lea Salonga, as Broadway already knows, is glorious, and Telly Leung is well known amongst Broadway people, but this show is going to make him a star.

 

8. What makes now the right time to bring Allegiance to the stage? I've been trying to get the story of the internment camps done for a long time. I think it's shameful that America doesn't know about the imprisonment of innocent people without due process. In our judicial system, the pillar of our judicial system is when one is arrested, they have the right to know why they are being arrested for, then they have the right to challenge that charge, and if they are found guilty, then they are imprisoned.

 

In my case, my family was taken from our homes and brought to the internment camps when I was five just because we looked like the people who bombed Pearl Harbor. There were no charges. It was a big violation of our constitutional rights. Yet Americans don't know about it. So, now is not the time to bring this story to the stage. It should have been known from 1950s on. Because our history books have been quiet about it, no one has taken the initiative to really explore it, but there are some academics who have written some books on it and some documentaries have been made. There have been some attempts in film, but they were bad attempts. For instance, that wonderful novel Snow Falling on Cedars was made into a movie. This girl in the book is an American. She speaks without an accent, she moves like an American, and she was born and raised in America. For the film, they cast an actress from Japan who has that Japanese body gesture and a heavy Japanese accent. To cast a Japanese actress as a Japanese American was very insulting. It showed the director and producer did not understand what the internment was about.