Challenging Shirtlessness

Gentle readers, over the past few months I found myself daunted by the prospect of posting.  Not that shirtlessness is so hard to find, but alas, it seemed all the shirtlessness in the media was being exhibited by white men.  Are people of color not considered sexy in our society?  This prospect depressed me, and I needed to take a hiatus from posting.  But recently a friend and colleague, Peter Kim, suggested that I use my blog for good by sharing information about a play that addresses some of these issues, and I heartily agreed.  For one, it afforded me the opportunity to interview the charming leading man and talk about Asian American male masculinity in the theater.

The show in question is Lloyd Suh's "Charles Francis Chan Jr.'s Exotic Oriental Murder Mystery," presented by the National Asian American Theatre Company at Walkerspace in Tribeca.  This send up of an Agatha Christie novel turns Asian American stereotypes on their heads and asks the audience to examine its own image of Asian Americans, and especially Asian American men.  The titular character, played with verve by Jeffrey Omura,  rails against the boxes he feels pushed into as an "Oriental" attending Berkeley in the 60s.  His quest to forge a new Asian American identity is paralleled by a Charlie Chan murder mystery replete with yellowface as well as his own personal journey to understand his father.

Mr. Omura, who identifies himself ethnically as half-Japanese and half-English, was kind enough to spend some time with me on his day off to answer a few questions about the role.  When asked about his general attitude towards male shirtlessness, he replied that since "women's bodies are exploited all the time, it's only fair that men should be equally exploited."  I inducted him as a member of IMS immediately.  We went on to talk about other opportunities he has had to be shirtless in shows and his opportunities to portray romantic characters.  He told me a story about auditioning for Puck in "Midsummer Night's Dream" last year when the director asked him to read the sides for Lysander.  Since graduating from drama school, he had never been considered for one of the lovers before and was actually shocked in the audition.  Happily he booked the role, but it did give him pause to think that while he had auditioned for Puck multiple times, this was the first time a director had thought to see him as a lover.  I think this story is not an unusual one for Asian American actors.

As Charles Francis Chan, however, Mr. Omura gets to play more than a lover; he plays a fully fleshed out man who struggles with his own identity in relation to society, his family, and in his relationship.  What drew him to the role was the way in which Lloyd Suh created two very aggressively opinionated Asian American characters (the female lead, Cathy, played with defiance by the stunning Jennifer Ikeda) to contradict the common perception of the Model Minority which he found unique.

Though Mr. Omura does not take off his shirt onstage, he was kind enough to share his shirtless backstage antics with IMS, challenging the myth that Asian American guys are not hunky all on his own.  As you can see above, he also does a tank top proud in the show.  If this is not reason enough to see "Charles Francis Chan Jr.'s Exotic Oriental Murder Mystery" before it closes on November 21st, I don't know what is!  Click here to get your tickets now while I continue to be...

Yours in shirtlessness,
Nandita
President
IMS