My dad has blond hair, my grandmother has blue eyes. My daughter has blue eyes and blond hair. So it is pretty funny to me that I'm so heavily identified as an Asian person.
Ruthie Ann Miles
Growing up, it was just me and my mom, so we would play games where we'd listen to the radio and sing harmonies to each other.
It takes every ounce of my concentration and focus every night to be in character, to sing in good voice, to not fall off the platform. I use my peripheral vision more than I have ever used it in my life.
The generation we live in, we're constantly entertained - we turn our heads this way, and there's something else to entertain us. Sitting down in one seat for two hours may not be enough anymore.
I had a professor in graduate school who told us, 'Know what you're good at, and do that thing.' And I thought, 'Hands down, I'm an ensemble girl. I'm a fierce ensemble girl. I am dependable.' I was never seen for the ingenue or the leading lady.
If I have a thought, I say it. If I keep it down, it's because I'm waiting for a good moment for me to say my piece. That's a luxury we have in our society, but parts of the world still don't have it.
Believe it or not, I used to be obsessed with shoes. I have maybe 50 pairs... until I moved to New York, when I realized I couldn't walk anywhere in any of them.
As Asian-Americans, we just don't often get the chance to tell the story from a leading person's perspective. And so I took jobs where they came, and they were always in the ensemble, and if it required me to play multiple instruments I did that, and if it was as a puppeteer, I did that. That's just how I was cast; that's how I was employed.
Definitely the Korean culture is very strong to me, and I grew up in Hawaii where Asian-Americans are the dominant culture, but I never thought of myself as the minority.
I do think that the strongest character is somebody that you can connect with to your personal self, or at least find the humanity in both of you and start from there.
Even if I'm not vocally my best, if I have a head cold, as an actor, I cannot give anything less than my very, very best. There's nowhere to hide!
The audience is directly in front of you, behind you, beside you, above you. They're everywhere. And if that person's not looking at you, then that person over there is. So someone is always holding you accountable to being completely open and available in this immersive experience.
I hope my daughter will be able to see shows starring Asian people that has nothing to do with an Asian story.
Rogers and Hammerstein were such a genius pair. They were able to touch on subject matter so far ahead of its time.
I've always considered myself an ensemble girl, meaning I was always cast in the ensemble.
My career definitely took an unexpected change in direction when it came to 'Here Lies Love.'
There are so many talented people in the world - black, white, yellow, whatever - and we want to tell stories, too. But oftentimes, we get the one token minority role.
