About the open letter:
In August of 2018, individuals from the Asian American theater community became aware of a local production of The Mikado being produced by the Portland, OR company Light Opera of Portland (LOoP). Comments were left by the individuals on LOoP's event page for the production letting them know that any performance of The Mikado should be considered offensive. After exchanging emails with individuals from the theater and Japanese American community, LOoP agreed to meet with one of the original commentators, Jenna Yokoyama, for consultation to talk about how they could make their production less offensive. It should be noted that before the meeting, LOoP had already decided to not do the tradition yellowface typically found in most Mikado performances, but instead decided to reset the location of the story's plot to outer space as well make some dialogue changes to reflect a more sci-fi theme. After meeting with a member of LOoP's administration, Yokoyama found that their current changes were not enough to avoid the inherent orientalism of the work. She concluded that no amount of changes could fully or respectfully address the damage this work has done and still does to the Asian American community.
LOoP's production of The Mikado is the third production to take place in the city of Portland since 2015. A middle school in 2015 performed it with an outer space setting much like LOoP's and another did an all puppet performance in 2016. The puppet performance featured panda puppet's as their main characters and was a production for children. We feel that the time has come for Portland to stop supporting productions of this work and others like it.
The open letter was written as a way to gather support for and from the Asian American and theater communities, as well as from other individuals who find the historical practice of performing outdated, offensive theater works as something that needs to be abandoned. Members of the Asian American community have long been ignored over this topic, but have recently been finding more voice. We are here to support and amplify those efforts locally and nationally.
Read Dmae Robert's think piece about this production in the Asian Reporter http://www.asianreporter.com/stories/dmae/2018/DR-16-18.htm
Links to learn more about the history of The Mikado's problematic performance history: