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You Don't Know Jack tells the fascinating story of pioneering American entertainer, Jack Soo, an Oakland native who became the first Asian American to be cast in the lead role of the television series Valentine’s Day (1963), before later starring in the popular comedy show Barney Miller (1975-1978). Featuring rare footage and interviews from Soo’s co-stars and friends, including actors George Takei, Nancy Kwan and Max Gail, comedians Steve Landesberg and Gary Austin, and producer Hal Kanter, the film traces Jack’s early beginnings as a nightclub singer and comedian, to his breakthrough role as Sammy Fong in Rogers and Hammerstein’s Broadway play and film version of The Flower Drum Song. The film also explores why Soo, a former internee who was actually born Goro Suzuki, was forced to change his name in the post WWII era, in order to perform in clubs in the mid-west. Soo’s life experiences and acting resume caused him to speak out against negative ethnic portrayals and even led him to refuse roles that were demeaning to Asian Americans.

The writer and director Lee Isaac Chung narrates a sequence from his film featuring Steven Yeun, Yeri Han, Noel Kate Cho and Alan Kim.

Two recent productions of American dramas employed provocative strategies for enacting Jewish ethnicity: National Asian American Theatre Company's performance of Clifford Odets's Awake and Sing! with an all–Asian American cast and New Yiddish Rep's staging of Toyt fun a seylsman, a Yiddish translation of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. Each production entails a different approach to performing Jewishness that exemplifies these companies' respective artistic agendas regarding the enactment of ethnicity, resulting in complex performances of masking and unmasking Jewishness. Moreover, their analysis illuminates how ethnicity is conceptualized and realized in the United States in the early decades of the twenty-first century. Yiddish appears strategically, if often obliquely, in the histories of composition, production, and reception for both dramas, emblematic of shifting notions of enacting ethnicity.

Mixed-race Asian American plays are often overlooked for their failure to fit smoothly into static racial categories, rendering mixed-race drama inconsequential in conversations about race and performance. Since the nineteenth century, however, these plays have long advocated for the social significance of multiracial Asian people.   Race and Role: The Mixed-Race Experience in American Drama traces the shifting identities of multiracial Asian figures in theater from the late-nineteenth century to the present day and explores the ways that mixed-race Asian identity transforms our understanding of race. Mixed-Asian playwrights harness theater's generative power to enact performances of \"double liminality\" and expose the absurd tenacity with which society clings to a tenuous racial scaffolding.

\"Pat Morita was a Japanese American comedian and actor. He rose to fame through roles in the television comedy series 'Happy Days' (1974-1984) and the motion picture The Karate Kid (1984) and its sequels. In 1984, Morita became the first Asian American to be nominated for an Academy Award for the best supporting actor category for his role in The Karate Kid.\" (World Book Online Behind the Headlines) Read more about Pat Morita.

\"Anna May Wong was an Asian American actress. She became famous during the early years of American cinema. In her time, she was one of the few Asian performers to achieve widespread success. Wong eventually grew disappointed with the limited roles offered to her. She also became an outspoken critic of the casting of white performers in Asian roles.\" (World Book Online Behind the Headlines) Learn more about Anna May Wong's life and acting career, and the challenges she faced as an Asian American woman in the film industry.

Combining a poignant family story with the stigma of racism, this film gives insight into the Asian-American experience, including the trauma of internment. The latest film from Academy Award-nominated director Christine Choy (Who Killed Vincent Chin?) tells the fascinating story of Larry and Trudie Long, a popular husband-and-wife nightclub act of the '40s and '50s. Narrated by their daughter, actress Jodi Long, the film traces the couple's rise from the Chinatown nightclub circuit to a coveted appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. Known as \"The Leungs,\" (a more Chinese-sounding name), they performed a mix of tap dancing, witty repartee and \"Chinaman\" caricatures that both played to and undermined the racist attitudes of the day. Trudie Long, born Kimiye Tsunemitsu, was actually not Chinese but of Japanese descent, which made her the target of discrimination during the war. Because of the limited opportunities for Asian Americans in the Broadway theater, Larry mourned the fact that he lost his role in the original production of Flower Drum Song. Although he went on to perform in the show's traveling company, his career never fully recovered. Redemption of a sort came when daughter Jodi appears on Broadway in a revival of the same musical, re-written by Chinese-American playwright David Henry Hwang.