If anyone is interested in seeing a good presentation of Miss Saigon, which is what King and I are discussing here, check out this Youtube page–you can see the entire production. There are scenes that are not in the CD soundtrack, although I’m pretty sure I remember them from the original production. This was done by the kids at JJ Pearce High School. They’re highly talented, especially the two kids who played Kim and the Engineer. I hope both of them have a future as actors–I see lots of potential.
I don’t want to debate the production itself–they’re kids, after all–but I’d like to go back to my original activist proposal in the review of Miss Saigon. What if we redid the casting so that there were Asian American actors playing Chris and John? Would it be racist? Or would it be as racist? Larry posted this article, and I agree with much of what the author Yoshikawa wrote during the ’90′s, but looking back from our standpoint in 2010, are we missing some positive aspects of Miss Saigon? Could an Asian American theater group possibly use the production to create something bigger and better?
Already, I can think of many ways in which just the high school production above could teach these kids something about deeper emotions. What if we could use this creation for something good?
(Sorry for posting the embedded violent scene above. That was the only scene between the two Asian American (I think) actors. 
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