By Taylor Adams
The first time Jin Ha saw his Korean heritage onstage was a year ago when he sat in the audience of Julia Cho’s “Aubergine,” a play about a Korean-American son tending to his terminally ill father, in New York City.
“I hadn’t seen that much Korean spoken onstage in my life,” Ha recalled. “It wasn’t until I saw it that I realized, ‘Oh my god. I’ve never seen this before!’ That is simultaneously moving, and at the same time, so devastating.”
“White people don’t need to think about that because they’re not challenged with trying to expand their humanity onto somebody else’s body and voice and face. For me, that’s what’s driven me to act.”
That experience is the reason the actor has conflicted feelings with calling himself a trailblazer.
But Ha, who currently stars in the Broadway revival of David Henry Hwang's “M. Butterfly,” which opened Oct. 26, understands the importance of his role as the first Asian-American face some audience members may see onstage.
“What anchored me back into my work and made me trust that, ‘There is purpose to this’ is representation,” Ha said. “It’s for that one Asian-American child or adult in the audience who is watching the show that I’m in that might gain some sense of self-assurance, that might gain some sense of identity, like ‘Oh, that’s me.’”
Born in Seoul, South Korea, Ha spent most of his childhood traveling. At 3, his family moved to Hong Kong, where he learned English watching ‘90s sitcoms and cartoons. That was also when he realized the dearth of Asian representation in American entertainment.
“If I had a time machine, I would go back and talk to my younger self and try to explain that, ‘Look, you’re seeing a lot of white bodies and faces on these screens. That doesn’t mean that you don’t deserve to be seen,” he said.
At 8, Ha moved to the U.S. His family settled in a small town in Connecticut, where his classmates were “primarily white upper-middle-class students,” a social group Ha, the son of Korean immigrant restaurant owners, was not a part of, he said.
Desperate to fit in, Ha stocked his wardrobe with clothes he said he “couldn’t afford,” ran for student body president, and played football and baseball. But, no matter his efforts, Ha couldn’t shake off the feelings of being “othered.”
In his preteens, Ha moved to New Jersey where he got his first taste of acting in a middle-school production of “Phantom of the Soap Opera,” a parody of “The Phantom of the Opera.” He played the Phantom.
“I remember it being a lot of fun and I really enjoyed it.” Ha said. “But being very type A and wanting to have financial security, in my life and in my career, most of my time after that first performance was, ‘What else can I do?’”
While Ha spent the rest of his teenage years doing a capella and one-off musicals, it took years before he admitted his passion for performing. When it came time for college, he majored in East Asian language and culture at Columbia University with the intention of pursuing finance.
Unhappy with where his future was headed, Ha took a gap year to teach kindergarten in Korea. One day, after noticing her son applying to internships with banks and hedge funds, Ha’s mother asked him about his future over breakfast.
“She said, ‘I support you in this endeavor and this path you’re going down. But are you really interested in finance? It seemed to have come out of nowhere,’” Ha said. “ My answer was, ‘No. I’m not really interested in finance. I just want security. I want stability.’ And she was like, ‘Great. Don’t do that then. Because you’ll be miserable.’”
Ha went on to pursue an MFA in acting at New York University, before landing his first-ever acting job in the ensemble of Shakespeare in the Park’s 2016 performance of “Troilus and Cressida.” Shortly after, Ha found his big break as an understudy for Aaron Burr and King George III, among other characters, in Chicago’s production of “Hamilton: An American Musical.”
Ha touts the play, which casts minority actors as the Founding Fathers, for its stride in race-conscious casting, but he doesn’t see it as a be-all-end-all for diversity, noting that the majority of roles are written for white actors.
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