Welcome back, Jomar!
With apologies to Gabe Kaplan, who did a much loved turn as a high school teacher back in the 1970s, there are few people from whom I’d rather get my American history and humanities lessons from than Jomar Tagatac. And to get them in-person rather than through distanced learning makes it all the sweeter.
Tagatac, one of the Bay Area’s most versatile actors, has played toughs and ciphers and romantic leads. With lightfooted grace he touches on all of those and more in the San Francisco Playhouse production of Hold These Truths, playwright Jeanne Sakata’s one-actor/multi-character dramatization of the life and trials of Gordon Hirabayashi, directed by Jeffrey Lo,
Hirabayashi’s parents and siblings were among the tens of thousands of U.S. residents of Japanese ancestry—many of whom were American-born U.S. citizens—evicted from their homes and herded to geographically remote internment camps during WWII under President Franklin Roosevelt’s infamous Executive Order 9066.
At age 23, having already registered as a conscientious objector to the U.S. military draft on grounds of religious pacifism, Hirabayashi leaned even further into his conscience. He openly refused the order of internment, arguing that it was unconstitutional, based only on racial prejudice rather than any real military need.
After turning himself in to the FBI, he was sent to jail where he began a convoluted trip through the American justice system that led to the Supreme Court’s upholding the charges against him in 1943, but, ultimately, in 1987, a dramatic overturning of his conviction.
During our ugly current confrontation with anti-Asian and anti-Black prejudice, Hirabayashi’s activist refusal to back down provide a powerful example And for theater buffs whose familiarity with the Japanese internment is based primarily on Allegiance, the George Takei-produced musical, Hold These Truths offers an important counterpoint to that show’s prevailing air of victimization.
That said, for all its earnestness, Sakata’s writing often feels like a civics primer. Granted, this particular civics lesson is sorely needed. And audiences of this production are in luck, because Tagatac gamely excavates emotions from Hirabayashi’s story that are not fully evident in a script that is generally plain and sometimes platitudinous.
He’s the kind of performer who goes above and beyond a playwright’s words to draw music out of characters’ souls. Who reaches right off the stage with a vibrant energy we’ve been missing.
Watch the mischief in Tagatac’s eyes when his Hirabayashi sharpens legal strategy, the way his body softens in tender pride when he speaks as Hirabayashi’s mother, the bushy-tailed energy he brings to a gang of college kids.
And watch his sheer joy in doing the work he loves—sharing meaningful stories with a live audience—when Tagatac yanks off Hirabayashi’s goofy mid-century hairdo at the end of the evening and directly acknowledges the crowd. His smile is well-earned yet deeply grateful. It says “Welcome back”, right back to us.
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One itchy question I’ve got to ask: Versions of Hold These Truths have been mounted since 2008. Along the way, Sakara has made revisions to her script, as playwrights are wont to do. But I was stopped cold and set squirming when Hirabayashi, after losing an important legal battle, moaned “I can’t breathe.”
Was that line added after May 25, 2020? If so, it should be reconsidered.
