By Chris S. Nishiwaki
NORTHWEST ASIAN WEEKLY
Saigon fell almost exactly 49 years ago, on April 30, 1975 to be exact. Three months later, Khahn Doan would be born in Vietnam. Last week, Doan opened in a leading role as Cottontail in the premier of Trista Baldwin’s “A Tale of Peter Rabbit” at Seattle Children’s Theatre playing opposite Korean-born Koo Park.
The play, adapted from Beatrix Potter’s classic “The Tale of Peter Rabbit,” will run at the Charlotte Martin Theatre at Seattle Center-based theater through May 19.
Meanwhile at the Seattle Shakespeare Company, two Asian American actors opened in the title roles of Romeo & Juliet, also last week, and will run through May 19 at Seattle Center. Seattle Shakespeare Company performs in the Center Theatre in the Seattle Center Armory.
Filipino actor Alegra Batara, who was raised in Shoreline, plays Juliet. The multi-racial Chinese American actor Morgan Gwilym Tso, who was raised in Seattle, plays Romeo.
Alegra Batara (right) as Juliet with Morgan Gwilym Tso (Romeo).
All four actors, either Seattle-trained or currently Seattle-based, are among a growing number of Asian and Asian American actors featured in local mainstage and regional theaters.
Not quite a year old, Doan moved to a refugee camp in Thailand in 1975 before moving to France. By age 3, her family settled in San Diego, where her extended family was living. Her earliest memories of performing are of dancing along to the Solid Gold Dancers on television when she was 5 years old. She would thrive in school, especially in Drama class.
Khahn Doan
“My mom would go, “oh nooo, I don’t want her to do that,” Doan recalls of her mother’s reaction to the young Doan’s penchant for performing. “It was always a part of me. It was a hobby. It was an elective in school. She didn’t really like it, but I got good grades so she couldn’t say, ‘no.’”
After earning a Bachelor’s in Sociology from Stanford, she found work in the booming high-tech industry in Silicon Valley. She survived the dotcom bust and the recession spurred by 9/11. Disillusioned from corporate and start-up work, she followed her passion for theater, taking classes at a community college in the Bay Area and eventually settling in Seattle.
“After a couple of years working out of college, I was kind of miserable,” Doan recalled. “I really wanted to do some theater. I found there was a good theater community in Seattle, so I tried it and I have made roots here.”
Since arriving in Seattle, she said opportunities for Asian and Asian American actors have oscillated over the years. She recalls meeting with former Seattle Rep Artistic Director Jerry Manning, who was the company’s casting director at the time, when she arrived in Seattle.
“I was a new face in town, I wrote to [Manning] and I asked him, ‘Will you want to have a conversation?’ This is in 2003. He said 10 years ago there were more roles for Asians.”
In “A Tale of Peter Rabbit,” the story is told by a family of hares, touching on themes of family, sibling connections, grief, and facing fears.
“I think there are a lot of elements that both adults and children will get into. It’s not just a children’s play. There are some deeper themes and that’s what drew me to [the show].
The cultural relativism of characters is not defined by race or ethnicity in “A Tale of Peter Rabbit,” making the leap smoother for audiences watching a play based on a fairy tale written by a British author over 130 years ago being performed by a multicultural cast.
“Here, if you are playing an animal from a book and the kids here are so much more open, they don’t care what race you are,” Doan explains. “This is a place where you can do that.
“I’ve done a lot of shows (at Seattle Children’s Theatre). I got my equity card here. Linda Hartzel was the artistic director at the time when I first arrived in Seattle. She always championed working actors and making it a professional theater.”
Doan said that, in the past, many actors of color had to walk a tighter rope than their white counterparts.
“In all honesty, historically, I can’t say right now, white actors would have opportunities to maybe not do a great job in a play. They get to learn. If they weren’t great one time, they would get cast again. They get their chops. I feel like people of color, you have to be great or you may not get other opportunities.”
Koo Park
Born and raised in Korea, Park spent a year-and-a-half as a youth in Utah, where his father was an exchange professor. He would finish his education, including an undergraduate degree, in his native Korea. He performed with a local theater company for a little over a year after graduating from college. Looking for professional direction, he quit acting and chose a 9-to-5 job.
By 2018, the acting bug came scratching. He moved to the United States and applied to over 50 graduate programs, eventually choosing the University of Washington where he earned a Master’s of Fine Arts in Acting.
He says that casting an actor of color can make it a challenge for some audience members to suspend disbelief. The versatile actor is up to the challenge of playing a variety of roles, however.
“What I feel, for example, if I play the son of a white woman in the story, I understand that for [audience members], it would be hard for them to believe because it gets out of the story, maybe it could. I won’t get out of the story but it might be difficult for [audience members] to follow the story. It would have to be a very conscious choice to cast me as the son of a white woman. That might tell a different story.
“I try to believe that it is not the only hindrance. I think it’s gotta be a conscious choice (by the director). People would be ‘look they cast an Asian in this role.’ There would have to be a very specific reason for that. As a performer, I don’t feel that I am playing for that reason. I am playing that character in that story the same as other people.”
Doan adds, “Honestly, most of the audience in Seattle are open to seeing things differently. There’s always a handful who might send a letter and say, ‘why would you do this?’ The majority are totally game. I feel like our artistic directors see that now.”
Seattle Children’s Theatre reaches out broadly to promote the show for kids and adults from diverse backgrounds.
“Sometimes, we will bring in kids from different parts of the community who don’t always see a play, kids of color,” Doan said. “That’s meaningful, too. To be a person of color on stage for kids to see themselves, that meant a lot to me, especially when I first got started.”