Hold These Truths
By Jeanne Sakata
Directed by Jessica Kubzansky
With Ryun Yu as Gordon Hirabayashi

THE CREATIVE TEAM

Ben Zamora.....................Scenic and Lighting Designer
John Zalewski..................Sound Designer and Original Music
Soojin Lee........................Original Costume Designs
Kelsey Daye Lutz..............Performance Stage Manager
Alyssa Escalante...............Rehearsal Stage Manager
Kristen Mun.......................Production Assistant

The Actor and Stage Managers employed in this production or members of Actors’ Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers in the United States.

BIOGRAPHIES

	Ryun Yu Gordon Hirabayashi This production marks Ryun Yu’s debut at The Armory. Ryun originated the role of Gordon Hirabayashi in the 2007 world premiere of Hold These Truths (under the title Dawn’s Light) at East West Players in Los Angeles, and most recently performed the role for Seattle’s ACT Theatre. Ryun has twice collaborated with David Henry Hwang, playing Mark in the film adaptation of Hwang’s play Bondage, and starring as the fictional David Henry Hwang in the playwright’s Yellow Face in the first adaptation of a major theatrical play for YouTube. In 2015, Ryun originated the lead role of Takeshi in the world premiere of Kimber Lee’s Tokyo Fish Story at South Coast Repertory. Other theater credits include the West Coast premiere of Richard Greenberg’s Take Me Out at Geffen Playhouse; Philip Kan Gotanda’s Sisters Matsumoto at Seattle Repertory Theatre and Huntington Theatre Company; the world premiere of Lloyd Suh’s American Hwangap at San Francisco’s Magic Theatre; Art and the Los Angeles premiere of Julia Cho’s The Language Archive at East West Players; and Sea Change at the Gay and Lesbian Center. Ryun co-wrote, co-produced, directed and stars in the upcoming feature film The Last Tour, and has also appeared in the films Only the Brave, The Brothers Solomon and The Mikado Project. TV appearances include Fuller House, Bones, Good Luck Charlie and Castle. He was the first Korean-American to train at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London and also has the first theater degree ever awarded by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Ryun would like to dedicate this performance to his son, Kenji, and his daughter, Miyako.

Jeanne Sakata
Playwright
Jeanne is thrilled to return to Portland Center Stage at The Armory with Hold These Truths, last seen by audiences in ACT Theatre’s 50^th Anniversary Mainstage Season following four sold-out performances in the ACT Lab. Hold These Truths will also be produced this year at Guthrie Theater and Perseverance Theatre. Premiering at East West Players in 2007, Hold These Truths had its Off-Broadway debut with the Epic Theatre Ensemble in 2012 (Drama Desk Nomination for Outstanding Solo Performance) and has since been performed at PlayMakers Repertory Company, People’s Light, Honolulu Theatre for Youth (co-produced with Daniel Dae Kim), terraNOVA Collective, Silk Road Rising (Millennium Park) and Coachella Valley Repertory Theatre. Jeanne is also an acclaimed actress who previously performed with Portland Center Stage at The Armory in David Henry Hwang’s M.Butterfly and Chay Yew’s Red, as well as with The Public Theater, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Kennedy Center, Mark Taper Forum, South Coast Repertory, La Jolla Playhouse, Intiman Theatre, ACT Theatre (Seattle), ACT (San Francisco) and Berkeley Repertory Theatre. Screen credits include the internationally acclaimed indie film Advantageous (US Dramatic Special Jury Award for Collaborative Vision, 2015 Sundance Film Festival) and guest starring roles on Bravo’s True Fiction, Dr. Ken, NCIS Los Angeles, Tyler Perry’s Meet the Browns, Desperate Housewives, Presidio Med, ER, Threat Matrix, Line of Fire, American Family, John Ridley’s I Got You, and Sex and Marriage, a Justin Lin YOMYOMF YouTube series. Special honors: LA Ovation Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in Red at East West Players; Lee Melville Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Los Angeles Theatre Community, Playwrights’ Arena; Outstanding Artist Award from LA Asian Pacific American Friends of Theatre; Entertainment Today Award for Best Supporting Actress in A Winter People at The Theatre @ Boston Court; and the establishment of the Jeanne Sakata Collection in the Library of Congress Playwrights Archive, Asian American Pacific Islander Collection. Special thanks to Tim, now and always. jeannesakata.com, holdthesetruths.info

Jessica Kubzansky
Director
Jessica Kubzansky is the co-artistic director of The Theatre @ Boston Court in Pasadena and an award-winning director working nationally. She is delighted to be back at The Armory, where she last directed James Still’s James Beard play, I Love to Eat. She developed and directed the world premiere of Hold These Truths with Jeanne and Ryun at East West Players and elsewhere, including Chicago’s Silk Road Rising and Seattle’s ACT Theatre. Other recent work includes: Stupid F**king Bird (ACT Theatre, Seattle); Luis Alfaro’s Mojada, A Medea in Los Angeles (The Theatre @ Boston Court/Getty Villa); Pygmalion (Pasadena Playhouse); RII, her own three-person Richard II (The Theatre @ Boston Court); The 39 Steps (La Mirada Theatre); Macbeth (Antaeus Theatre Company); and Hamlet with Leo Marks (Theater 150). Kubzansky does a great deal of new work, including the recent New York premiere of Sheila Callaghan’s Everything You Touch (Rattlestick at The Cherry Lane) and the world premieres of Stefanie Zadravec’s Colony Collapse, EYT, Michael Elyanow’s The Children, Jordan Harrison’s Futura, Laura Schellhardt’s Courting Vampires, Salamone/McIntyre's Gulls, Mickey Birnbaum's Bleed Rail, Carlos Murillo's Unfinished American Highwayscape…, Van Itallie's Light, Cody Henderson's Cold/Tender (all at The Theatre @ Boston Court), among many others. Kubzansky received the Los Angeles Drama Critics' Circle Award for Sustained Excellence in Theatre.

Ben Zamora
Scenic and Lighting Designer
Ben Zamora’s design work has been seen internationally at venues including The Barbican Centre and Royal Festival Hall (London), Mariinsky Theatre (Russia), Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Brisbane Festival (Australia), Baltic Sea Festival (Stockholm), Helsinki Festival, Berliner Festspiele, Lucerne Festival (Switzerland), ACT Theatre (Seattle), Walt Disney Concert Hall and Getty Villa (Los Angeles), De Doelen (The Netherlands), and Festival d'Aix-en-Provence and Salle Pleyel (France). Moving seamlessly between performance and visual art, Zamora has created light-based sculptures and art installations for performance-based works, including projects with Kronos Quartet, Berlin Philharmonic, The Barbican, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Saint Genet and Hammer Museum (Los Angeles). His artistic collaborators have included Bill Viola, Gronk, Peter Sellars, Steve Reich and Beryl Korot, and the renowned firm Olson Kundig Architects. Zamora has created large-scale installations and sculptures for Park Avenue Armory in New York, Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, Art Basel/Design Miami, Kunsthalle Krems in Austria, Frye Art Museum, Suyama Space, as well as for a number of other galleries, museums, private art collections and public art projects.

John Zalewski
Sound Designer and Original Music
Zalewski’s work has been seen at Center Theatre Group, The Los Angeles Theatre Center, Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, Guthrie Theater, The Armory, South Coast Repertory, Humana Festival, Walt Disney Concert Hall, Geffen Playhouse, The Broad Stage, Cherry Lane Theatre, Evidence Room, The Theatre @ Boston Court, Antaeus Theatre Company, Padua Playwrights, The Actors' Gang and 24th Street Theatre. Awards include seven LA Stage Alliance Ovations, seven LA Weekly Awards, three LADCC Awards and 10 Backstage West Garland Awards. Recent credits include the immersive The Day Shall Declare It in London and Downtown Los Angeles; Everything You Touch at Cherry Lane Theatre; Tokyo Fish Story at South Coast Repertory; La Olla at Getty Villa and The Los Angeles Theatre Center; My Barking Dog at The Theatre @ Boston Court; A Steady Rain at Alliance Theatre and Guthrie Theater; Women Laughing Alone with Salad at Kirk Douglas Theatre; Destiny of Desire at Arena Stage (Washington, DC) and South Coast Repertory/Goodman Theatre; and Mexican Trilogy at The Los Angeles Theatre Center.

Kelsey Daye Lutz
Performance Stage Manager
The Armory credits include: stage manager for The Pianist of Willesden Lane, Each and Every Thing, Forever, The Santaland Diaries, The Lion, The People’s Republic of Portland (second engagement), Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, The Typographer’s Dream, The Last Five Years and A Small Fire; and production assistant for Clybourne Park, Venus in Fur, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The North Plan and Anna Karenina. Kelsey Daye is a graduate of University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She would like to thank her pups for all their unconditional love, and Shamus for being wonderful.

Alyssa Escalante
Rehearsal Stage Manager
Alyssa is an Equity stage manager in Los Angeles who is always thrilled to work with the talented Jessica Kubzansky. Some of her favorite Los Angeles credits include Haunted House Party (dir. Matt Walker), Mojada: A Medea in Los Angeles (dir. Jessica Kubzansky), Criers for Hire (dir. John Lawrence Rivera), Cash on Delivery (dir. Ray Cooney), My Barking Dog (dir. Michael Michetti), The Missing Pages of Lewis Carrol (dir. Abigail Deser), Happy Days (dir. Andrei Belgrader), RII (dir. Jessica Kubzansky) and Proof (dir. John Hindman). She has also toured the United States with Placas: The Most Dangerous Tattoo (starring Ric Salinas).

Kristen Mun
Production Assistant
Kristen Mun is originally from Hawaii and graduated from Southern Oregon University with a B.F.A. in Stage Management. This is her fourth season at The Armory, where previous credits include: production assistant on A Streetcar Named Desire, Each and Every Thing, Forever, The Santaland Diaries, Three Days of Rain, Threesome and LIZZIE, and 2nd production assistant on Fiddler on the Roof. Outside of Portland, she has worked at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Idaho Repertory Theatre and Actors Theater of Louisville. In Portland, she has worked as a production assistant and stage manager with theater companies including Artists Repertory Theatre (And So It Goes … and Red Herring), Oregon Children’s Theatre (A Year with Frog and Toad, Charlotte’s Web, Ivy and Bean and Junie B. Jones) and Broadway Rose Theatre Company (Oklahoma!). Outside of stage managing, Kristen is a fight choreographer and stage combat teacher.