OPINION Page 6 n THE ASIAN REPORTER May 21, 2018 Volume 28 Number 10 May 21, 2018 ISSN: 1094-9453 The Asian Reporter is published on the first and third Monday each month. Please send all correspondence to: The Asian Reporter 922 N Killingsworth Street, Suite 2D, Portland, OR 97217 Phone: (503) 283-4440, Fax: (503) 283-4445 News Department e-mail: news@asianreporter.com Advertising Department e-mail: ads@asianreporter.com General e-mail: info@asianreporter.com Website: www.asianreporter.com Please send reader feedback, Asian-related press releases, and community interest ideas/stories to the addresses listed above. Please include a contact phone number. Advertising information available upon request. Publisher Jaime Lim Contributing Editors Ronault L.S. Catalani (Polo), Jeff Wenger Correspondents Ian Blazina, Josephine Bridges, Pamela Ellgen, Maileen Hamto, Edward J. Han, A.P. 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Back issues of The Asian Reporter may be ordered by mail at the following rates: First copy: $1.50 Additional copies ordered at the same time: $1.00 each Send orders to: Asian Reporter Back Issues, 922 N. Killingsworth St., Portland, OR 97217-2220 The Asian Reporter welcomes reader response and participation. If you have a comment on a story we have printed, or have an Asian-related personal or community focus idea, please contact us. Please include a contact name, address, and phone number on all correspondence. Thank you. ith a storm in the wind, what would you Sometimes people stand up to it, but more often do? they stand by as spectators or brush off its impact. Almost 30 years ago, I sang these lyrics I’m even more deeply troubled when people of from the original version of Cabaret, the musical by color become part of a hate movement. A John Kander, Fred Ebb, and Joe Mastersoff based self-declared “Asian Nazi” — 24-year-old Heon on the play I Am a Camera, which was adapted from “Hank” Jong Yoo of Tyler, Texas — was arrested in Christopher Isherwood’s novel Goodbye to Berlin. April on charges of making false statements when Cabaret is set in 1930s Berlin when he purchased seven guns in east the Nazi Party is gradually taking Texas. Yoo created YouTube videos over Germany. It centers on a of himself singing “Dixie,” wearing young American named Cliff who a Confederate soldier’s uniform, adventures to the Kit Kat Klub, a and “denigrating Black Lives seedy cabaret where he meets a Matter and Jewish people.” On the British singer, Sally Bowles. Southern Poverty Law Center’s Many readers might be familiar website, he was quoted as with the movie starring Liza “considering myself white” and Minnelli and Joel Grey. In 1998, calling his parents a racial slur. the new Broadway version of the It saddened me that an play was adapted with songs from immigrant raised in Texas could be the film. In it, LGBTQI (lesbian, so attracted to fascism. It’s even gay, bisexual, transgender, worse that no one stood up to him, questioning, and intersex) taught him to embrace being undercurrents became more Dmae Roberts plays Fräulein Schnei- Asian, or connected him with prominent and the club and der in Cabaret. (Photo/Greg Parkinson communities of color. dancing became more gritty and Photography) It takes strength to stand up W raunchy. I was in the original version of the musical twice, once as a Kit Kat Girl and a few years later as Fräulein Schneider, the “B” story of the play, about an ill-fated elder romance. I always wanted to play the role of Fräulein Schneider when I was closer to the actual age of the character and had more life experience. When I learned that Fuse Theatre Ensemble, a company that also produces the OUTwright Theatre Festival of LGBTQI works, was staging Cabaret, I auditioned. I’ve now checked off my bucket list an opportunity to reprise a character I love in the “new” risqué version of the play that contains more sexual situations and nudity than the previous productions. What’s most striking is that the storyline of anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany is more blatant and ominous. Considering the recent rise of nationalism and neo-Nazi gatherings, Cabaret has greater weight and pertinence now than when I was last involved in the play in 1989. Since the 2016 U.S. presidential election, there have been daily headlines of not only anti-Semitic hate crimes, but racist, xenophobic, and homophobic ones as well. against hate. Many people don’t, however, because they are afraid, as exemplified by Fräulein Schneider in the play when she sings the questions: Would you pay the price? What would you do? My revisitation of Cabaret in the highly immersive production in Portland is featured through June 2 at the real cabaret setting of the Funhouse Lounge. It also has a cast that’s two-thirds LGBTQI and includes five actors of color. Though some might blush (or laugh) at the nudity and sexuality, the play holds a mirror to the growing nationalism and neo-Nazi activities in our country. Cabaret, with its fun and sometimes poignant and chilling songs, dramatizes how evil can grow slowly into a pandemic if it’s not addressed. After making a decision between love or bowing to the will of an oppressive nationalist movement, Fräulein Schneider asks the important question that still rings true in 2018: Go on; tell me I will listen. What would you do? If you were me … Cabaret is playing at the Funhouse Lounge, located at 2432 S.E. 11th Avenue in Portland, through June 2. To learn more, call (214) 504-6350 or visit . To buy tickets, visit . Opinions expressed in this newspaper are those of the authors and not necessarily those of this publication. Wondering what events are going on this week? Check out The Asian Reporter’s event calendars, on page 12.