“Hirabayashi reminds us that it is precisely when our bedrock values are hardest to defend that we must stand most firmly behind them”
“I wish the current White House, along with young people throughout the nation, could be compelled to attend Hold These Truths...the story of Gordon Hirabayashi reminds us that it is precisely when our bedrock values are hardest to defend that we must stand most firmly behind them.”
Los Angeles Times
Charles McNulty
“I cannot overstate how timely and worth seeing Hold These Truths is…the production is impeccable”
“I cannot overstate how timely and worth seeing Hold These Truths is. The production is impeccable. Ryun Yu’s performance as Gordon Hirabayashi is inspiring... Hold These Truths is an imperative, an admonition to remember those self-evident truths and practice what they preach even when our elected officials do not... it is the play’s resonant content—about what makes America great and what doesn’t— that really gets us where we live right now.”
DC Metro Theatre Arts
John Stoltenberg
“Galvanizing… a lone citizen fighting government corruption”
“Jeanne Sakata’s Hold These Truths has been around since 2007, but you can understand why Arena would revisit Hirabayashi’s history now. Hysteria and wholesale racism — ‘No Japs’ signs were features of the American landscape even before the war broke out — are balanced against the principles of the nation’s founding documents, and the argument made its way to the Supreme Court. Hirabayashi lost, but the government rigged the case. Forty years later the verdict was reversed… Hirabayashi’s social justice crusade is ultimately galvanizing... the internment policy makes the systemic injustice impossible to ignore, and Hirabayashi becomes a lone citizen fighting government corruption in an increasingly dark saga."
The Washington Post
Nelson Pressley
“Surprisingly humorous and openhearted… luminous moments of youthful joy”
“In Sakata’s absorbing 90-minute account, versatile actor Joel de la Fuente portrays the late Hirabayashi from his rural Washington State boyhood, to his federal court exoneration in 1987 along with two other resisters. He was ultimately awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
It’s a fascinating saga, drawing on the man’s own eloquent writings and Sakata’s extensive interviews with him and other research for the touring show.
Yet along with the appalling bigotry it re-enacts, Hold These Truths is also surprisingly humorous and openhearted.
…And Sakata etches the everyday indignities and exclusion West Coast Asian Americans endured, much like what African Americans faced in the segregated South. In one achingly ironic episode, Hirabayashi is recommended for a job in a YMCA world brotherhood program. When he turns up for an interview, his race makes him unacceptable to the project’s backers.
But luminous moments of youthful joy arise too, accentuated in Lisa Rothe’s fluid staging and Cat Tate Starmer’s sensitive lighting scheme.”
The Seattle Times
Misha Berson
“Mesmerizing and multidimensional…Sakata’s lovely, lilting script weaves a tapestry of experience”
“Mesmerizing and multidimensional…Sakata’s lovely, lilting script weaves a tapesty of experience that is at times funny, at times uplifting, and sometimes, just tremendously sad and shocking.”
Triangle Arts & Entertainment
Susie Potter
“Shines an illuminating and searing light…on US history”
“Shines an illuminating and searing light on one of the most shameful chapters in US history.”
The Boston Globe
Don Aucoin
“Exquisite … a play where one man’s singular story, so full of heart and heartbreak, can speak to the struggles of an entire nation”
“In her exquisite play Hold These Truths, Jeanne Sakata explores the extraordinary life of Mr. Hirabayashi, who following the bombing of Pearl Harbor was one of the only Japanese Americans to refuse cooperation with the internment orders given by the U.S. Government. The play is a master class in the personal as political – a play where one man’s singular story, so full of heart and heartbreak, can speak to the struggles of an entire nation.”
New York Theatre Review
Julia Hochner
“Hate, ignorance, fear, prejudice, and inhumanity… a rallying cry for our own times”
“The U.S. recently marked the 75th anniversary of Executive Order 9066, which led to the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. However much we might wish to close that disgraceful chapter, TheatreWorks’ production of “Hold These Truths” only makes clear that the hate, ignorance, fear, prejudice and inhumanity of 1942 are still ours in 2018.
Jeanne Sakata’s one-man play, which opened Saturday, July 14, at Lucie Stern Theatre, follows the extraordinary story of Gordon Hirabayashi (Joel de la Fuente), a nisei college student who fought his internment from his campus to the Supreme Court and was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom…
A master storyteller, Joel de la Fuente delivers each line as if he can’t wait to share it with us, which endows even Gordon’s lowest moments with springy, propulsive vigor. Directed by Lisa Rothe, he can will a whole world or character into being on a spare stage with one crisply defined gesture... A rallying cry for our own times...”
San Francisco Chronicle
Lily Janiak
“Stunning… brilliant portrayal of a genuine hero"
“A Brilliant Portrayal of a Genuine Hero… A simple yet stunning one-man show inspired by and based on the life and heroism of Gordon Hirabayashi… Hirabayashi’s heroic stand against the United States government and the prevailing sentiment of fear and prejudice is brilliantly portrayed by Ryun Yu.”
Huffington Post