“Gripping one-man show… feels eerily true to life”

“One of the stunning things about Joel de la Fuente’s performance in Jeanne Sakata’s gripping one-man show, presented by Epic Theatre Ensemble, is how completely he embodies the real-life character of Gordon Hirabayashi, a Japanese-American pacifist, born in 1918. Hirabayashi, believing that it was unconstitutional for the U.S. government to intern American citizens, refused, as a college student, to join his family in the camps after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, and was imprisoned. De la Fuente, under the direction of Lisa Rothe, also plays many other characters—Hirabayashi’s parents, his college friends, police, lawyers, judges, a Hopi Indian—but his portrayal of Hirabayashi, whom President Obama just this year posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, feels eerily true to life. With gorgeous lighting by Cat Tate Starmer.”

The New Yorker