For 50 years, he’s written about the Japanese American internment. Now, he’s turning to opera.
UC Berkeley professor and playwright Philip Kan Gotanda tells the story of a young Japanese American farmer who loses everything in Both Eyes Open, to be performed on campus Feb. 15 and 16.
An excerpt from this story is featured below
When the opportunity arose for Berkeley’s Chamber Chorus to become a part of the campus production of Both Eyes Open, Wei Cheng, who directs the campus’s Choral Program, couldn’t pass it up. “I’m always looking for collaborations like this,” she said.
An associate professor of teaching in the Department of Music since 2018, Cheng makes it a point to introduce her students to three different sides of choral music: traditional, classic literature, like compositions by Bach and Haydn; works that explore social justice themes, like Huang Ruo’s Angel Island and Jimmy López’s Dreamers; and contemporary new music pieces that push the bounds of what choral music can be, like Both Eyes Open.
The Chamber Chorus, made up of about 40 campus and community musicians, will join professional performers and the campus ensemble-in-residence, the Eco Ensemble, to present a new iteration of the opera.
Chorus member Tyler Hou, a fourth-year student who has been singing in choirs for over a decade, said Both Eyes Open has one of the most rhythmically challenging scores he has performed, with “strange and crunchy cords” to create texture and layered emotion.
When conducting the musicians, Cheng encourages them to tap into their own emotions in order to convey the urgency and darkness of the story. “There’s a lot of emotional involvement, because you have to be in the now, right?” said Cheng. “You have to feel the words, feel the drama.”
Telling the story of the Japanese American incarceration feels especially important in today’s political climate, said Hou. “People might learn about Japanese internment in middle school or high school, then forget about it and move on,” he said. “But there’s a motif in the play that it’s important to remember this as a lesson, that it should not be forgotten. I think it’s good to have a reminder of this type of injustice now.”
Like opera star John Duykers did 16 years ago, Gotanda hopes that Both Eyes Open changes the atmosphere of the Zellerbach Playhouse, leaving an indelible mark on each person’s mind that keeps the memory of the internment alive.
“Anti-immigrant hatred flows through the country,” he said. “It’s in the soil itself. Depending on whose hands are nurturing it, it can grow anything.”
“Ultimately, the question is: Going forward, what will it grow?”