First look at The New Canadians
If you’ve had a conversation with me anytime in the last four years about my artistic work, there’s a pretty good chance you’ve heard me talk about The New Canadian, the grassroots community newspaper founded by idealistic young Japanese Canadians in 1938 Vancouver. Ever since I first learned their incredible story, I’ve felt that it’s better than anything I could try to make up. I started archival research on The New Canadian in 2017, with the intention to write a play about its staff; somewhere along the line, the play became a musical.
The universal pose for “musical”! Performers L-R: Kaitlyn Yott, Brent Hirose, Chris Lam in the studio for our video shoot, with arms and fingers outstretched.
I read every single article published in The New Canadian from 1938 until mid-1945. I interviewed over 30 Japanese Canadians in 4 provinces, both descendants of New Canadian staff and current-day community leaders. I wrote. And rewrote…and wrote grants. The wonderful dramaturg Joanna Garfinkel provided much support and guidance, and musical theatre composer extraordinaire Peter Abando brought his incomparable talent and collaborative spirit. I wrote more grants.
So now, more than four years after I first opened Muriel Kitagawa’s bound volume of The New Canadian from 1939-1941, you can finally see a small piece of what I’ve been working on all this while. It’s been a long, fascinating, revelatory journey to get to this point, and there’s a much longer way to go from here. We recorded this video in and around our scaled-down, COVID-careful workshops of the full show, spread out across 2021; most of Act I is really coming together, and we’ll be digging deeper into Act II in the fall.
It’s available on the Powell Street Festival YouTube channel until August 31.
Another image of Kaitlyn, Brent, and Chris singing a song from The New Canadians.
I couldn’t ask for a better platform than Powell Street Festival to offer this first preview. And none of it would have been possible without support from BC Arts Council, Canada Council, Firehall Arts Centre, and Touchstone Theatre. But this is only the beginning. Ensemble-driven musicals are a huge undertaking to produce that need a lot of resources, not just to develop and “preview”, but even more so when it’s time to actually bring them to the stage in full.
There are two ways you can show your support for this project right now. The first is to sign up for our mailing list, which I promise to use only occasionally to provide updates on future stages of development, and opportunities to see more of the show. The greater number of folks who sign up, the better it looks the next time I apply for more funding for the show. The second is to make a donation to the project – no amount too small. If I can have a line item in my budget of contributions from the community, it will add that much more credibility to the value of investing in this huge project for arts funders.
It feels a bit surreal to finally be releasing a small piece of this work into the world at large. While I’ve been talking it up for years, it’s largely remained a private labour of love, my huge nerdy secret - and something that’s become intensely personal. Of course, the story of The New Canadian belongs to many people who worked on the paper, their families, and their community of readers. I hope I’ve done something to honour the incredible people who worked on it, and that this show will make it meaningful for many more people in the years to come.
Me (Carolyn Nakagawa) on-set with a photo of my grandma - from the intro to the video preview
Shoutout to Laura Fukumoto for the set design
If you have a story about The New Canadian that you’d like to share with me, or if you want to reach out about the project for any other reason, you can contact me by emailing newcanadiansmusical[at]gmail.com or using the contact form on this website. I’d love to hear from you.
I’m keeping a running thank-you list of everyone who has helped me as I figure out how to navigate the enormous process of musical theatre creation, whether it was by letting me interview them, giving me feedback or advice, or countless other ways – so far it’s over 80 people and I know there will be many more. For any of you who are reading this, thank you for helping me get to this point. I hope you enjoy the video and that you get to see the full musical someday not too long from now.