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[0:00] Alan Seales: Welcome back to the Theatre Podcast. Intimate personal conversations with theatre's biggest names. I'm your host, Alan Seales. We're just going to jump right into the interview here, but before we do, make sure to visit me online at Instagram and Twitter. Visit me at Facebook.com slash Official Theatre Podcast. Please leave a rating, leave a review. And now, here we go with Gen Parton-Shin.

[0:49] Alan Seales: My guest today got my attention after I watched several videos of himself and his friends performing Hamilton songs translated expertly, I might say, to Japanese. He was Angel in the original Japanese production of Rent and has numerous additional credits, including Next to Normal, Rocky Horror, Miss Saigon, and even on TV on The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt on Netflix. His credits have allowed him to perform all around the world. He seems like he has such an interesting life growing up, which we're going to get into right now. Gen Parton-Shin, welcome to the Theatre Podcast.

[1:22] Gen Parton-Shin: Thank you for having me. This is very exciting.

[1:29] Alan Seales: No problem. Gosh, your background is so unusual. And I was reading on your website that where were you? You were growing up in London, Seoul, Tokyo, Philadelphia, Philly, New York, New York. What was your childhood?

[1:43] Gen Parton-Shin: Well, I grew up in England. So my mother studied child language acquisition under Noam Chomsky, and so I was basically her guinea pig. And even though we were in London, I wasn't allowed to speak any English at home. And she really strictly reinforced this. So it was kind of like my survival was based on speaking Japanese. So I was able to learn Japanese at a pretty proficient level, even though I wasn't living in Japan. And which was really lucky, because when I went back to Japan, I was kind of a few years behind, but you know, able to catch up. And I think a lot of like bicultural kids, third culture kids, they go to international school, whereas I went to a local Japanese school. So I kind of grew up with the full Japanese education and everything, which has really helped me now as a translator and stuff like that.

[2:34] Alan Seales: So you actually use the term third culture on your website, too. And I'd never heard that term before. Maybe it's my complete ignorance. But so what is third culture exactly?

[2:44] Gen Parton-Shin: Third culture kid is kind of a term that's thrown around for kids who have bicultural backgrounds who don't quite belong to one single culture. They tend to be bilingual, sometimes trilingual. They tend to go to international school. They tend to have identity crises, crises.

[3:00] Alan Seales: Right at home in theater.

[3:01] Gen Parton-Shin: Exactly. Yeah. That's why you resonate with all the outcasts in theater or in the stories of theater. And yeah, I think even you could be growing up in a single culture. But you know, if you grew up an ethnic minority, for example, I think a lot of times you're projected an expectation to represent a certain culture, especially if you're like Asian or any kind of like minority culture that isn't actually African-American, but is kind of like people perceive you as fresh off the boat. And so then you feel this pressure to represent this culture that you're not actually of. And so, I mean, I think there are many different kinds of third culture kids. But it's kind of like when the culture isn't just given to you, but like you're looking for it and you kind of find your own sense of identity, you cultivate it by yourself. That's kind of what it means.

[4:00] Alan Seales: Well, do you do you have, I guess, your own. Of course, you have your own self-love, sense of self-identity. But how what do you identify with? Because I mean, looking at you right now, I am I am a white male who presents very much as Caucasian. If I get very bushy beard, I can I've been cast as Middle Eastern once or twice, which probably wouldn't fly now. Who knows? But for you, like if you were like, I'm Korean, I'd be like, OK. And if you said I'm Japanese, I'd say, OK. And but if you were like, I'm American, I'm like, OK. You know, right. So how do you identify at this point? Because I guess you said you were born and grew up in London or were you born in London?

[4:37] Gen Parton-Shin: I was born in London.

[4:38] Alan Seales: So you so you are a British citizen.

[4:40] Gen Parton-Shin: I am. However, because I only lived there until I was 10. And I guess, you know, everyone who speaks English in America speaks with an American accent. And then I've lived in the United States for so long that I've lost that part of my identity. I don't really identify as British and more of a New Yorker, I guess. On the Asian side, my mother is Korean-Japanese, but she's third generation Korean-Japanese. And the historical context here is that Japan had colonized Korea for 37 years, starting in 1910 until the end of the Second World War. And a whole bunch of Koreans migrated to Japan and kind of laid their roots there. And then there's a whole movement of going back to Korea after the liberation of Korea.

And of course, the Koreans in Japan had to pick between the north and the south. And now we know who made the right choice. But at the time, people had no idea. They all looked like good prospects. But then a bunch of them stuck around in Japan. And my family is of that demographic. We consist of about 0.05% of the population. So one in 200 people, I guess, is of Korean descent in Japan. And yeah, there's a substantial number of us. Obviously, everyone's pretty much like mentally Japanese. But Japan isn't a country that allows citizenship just by being born there. So a lot of them actually retain their Korean citizenship, even though they're third, fourth generation, which is kind of crazy.

[6:10] Alan Seales: I didn't know that. I guess I just sort of naively assumed that whatever country you were born in, that's what citizenship you got associated with. And then you could also apply or get citizenship of your parents later on in life.

[6:22] Gen Parton-Shin: Yeah, I guess there's a lot of... Well, I think in America, it makes sense because America is a country of immigrants, right? Minus the Native Americans. But Japan is a country, it's a homogenous country that's already had their population there. The country wasn't built upon people arriving into the country. So the majority don't have an incentive to hand out citizenship. And also, it can be xenophobic too.

[6:52] Alan Seales: Yeah, I can see that. Well, bringing this back to theater, then, you've come here, you moved to New York and actually fulfilled, I was reading that you got your college graduation ceremony, you dove into a conservatory program, etc., etc., completed your curriculum on a tourist visa, which I guess we're not supposed to talk about.

[7:09] Gen Parton-Shin: You dug deep. Hey, I already got my artist green card now and I'm applying for citizenship soon. So I think I'm in the clear. But I mean, I just didn't want to waste time. So the tourist visa allowed for up to a year. And so I just went to school. I didn't even tell the school. They had no idea.

[7:36] Alan Seales: And then was it sort of kind of a no-brainer to stick around New York for a while? Or I guess when was this in the timeline of the original production of Rent in Japan?

[7:48] Gen Parton-Shin: Oh, I see. I had done Rent and this was my first theatrical professional production amongst a bunch of professional actors. And actually, it's Rent, so they had some non-actors too, singers and such. However, I think the experience for me, I got through it. But at the same time, I was like, I need training. If I'm going to survive in this business, I have no idea what this is about or how to act and all this stuff. I'd only taken snippets of conservatories in the summer and stuff. And so after Rent, I decided that I was going to dive into acting school. But I had to finish college first in Japan. So I did that and then I went to acting school. So after Rent, I didn't do any professional productions for about three years or longer, I think.

And then while I was in school, I got an offer for an original Frank Wildhorn musical in Japan called Mitsuko, which was about the first Japanese lady who married a foreigner back in the late 1800s. She married an Austrian aristocrat and then they had seven children, of which the second child, who's half Japanese, half Austrian, became the founding father of the European Union, which people don't know about. But the person who founded the European Union was half Japanese. So I played that role. But sorry, going back to your question. So yeah, then I went to acting school and then there was a showcase and then I guess I got an agent there. And then that was how I sponsored my visa.

[9:18] Alan Seales: What did you get? What did you get your degree in Japan? Because you said you finished your college degree in Japan, right?

[9:24] Gen Parton-Shin: Just liberal arts.

[9:26] Alan Seales: So just your standard, your standard, hand-wavy, hand-wavy, liberal arts degree.

[9:31] Gen Parton-Shin: A bit of everything. A bit of literature, a bit of theater studies, art, history, international politics, business.

[9:39] Alan Seales: That's cool. Okay, so then you come here. But then in looking at your resume, you've done good work here in the US. You continue to work in Japan. And I guess, taking it back to these videos you've translated, it looks like now you're building sort of a reputation for being able to do this, which we'll get to in a second. But at what point were you like, oh, I'm just going to take my shot and Helpless from Hamilton and just translate them into Japanese and then make music videos out of them?

[10:01] Gen Parton-Shin: I think, well, having done a couple of shows in Japan, I wasn't always fully satisfied with the translations that I was given, that I was working with as an actor. I remember one show, I'm not going to name it because I just don't want to throw people under the bus. But I submitted something like 10 to 12 pages of requests to amend my lines, which is a lot. Basically, I made so much noise. I was like, the translations suck. I didn't say that. But I was like, it doesn't reflect the original intention, which really, really bothered me because it was such a good show, that they dedicated a whole day. Basically, they stopped rehearsals and they dedicated a whole day to do a roundtable to just go through the entire script with the translation suggestions.

Since back then, I was like, I want to actually see if I can actually do it. It's easy to criticize other people's work, but can you actually do it? That was something that I actually hadn't tried and wasn't quite confident about. Then Hamilton came along and I was like, fuck it, let's do it. I had a solo show coming up, so the stakes were really low. It's somewhere where you can just experiment, do things. I'd gone in for Hamilton in the US for over 10 times, so I had a lot of practice in English. I was starting to understand the emphases that need to be met, the cadences, all the lyrical nuances that need to be honored were really sinking into my body. It just felt like a good moment to just see what would happen if I did it in Japanese.

[12:12] Gen Parton-Shin: It's really fun for me to watch the videos because I was telling you before we started recording that I took three years of Japanese in high school that I can't really remember anything. I can't remember any of it anymore. Of course, one of the great parts about Hamilton, and just like any song in any well-known show, is the rhythm of the words. It drives the song as much as the words and as much as everything else. You've got to get that right. When I'm listening to your versions of Lin-Manuel's expert verses, I don't feel like I'm losing anything when it comes to the musicality of the numbers, if that makes sense.

[13:00] Gen Parton-Shin: Wow. Thank you for saying that.

[13:02] Alan Seales: You're welcome. The comments that I was reading, too, in the YouTube videos, and for those listening, we'll have the links to watch the videos in the show notes for this episode, so make sure to go watch them. A lot of the comments were very similar, especially for...

[13:18] Gen Parton-Shin: It was like, oh, the translations are awesome. The rhythm is great, especially when Hamilton comes in, you know, when you come in. And it was, it's really, really cool to me. And I cannot imagine, I don't discount how hard it was to probably get that right, because when you're translating it, I assume that there's no direct translation to a lot of the way that, you know, the way Lynn puts end of one word as the beginning of the next, you know, translating that to a different language has got to keep you up all night. Yeah, it's, it's like a puzzle. Honestly, I really, really enjoy it. Otherwise, I wouldn't, I don't think I'd be doing, I've finished about three fifths of the show now. And I just kind of like do it on my spare time, because it's, I learned so much from doing it, I guess.

It's really, really, really exciting to listen to it in Japanese. And, and to, I don't know, like, find out that it works. Just because like, I love, like my life, one of my life missions is to bridge Japan and the US. And, like, for example, I co-founded a company called Broadway in Japan, where we would fly in Broadway directors, choreographers, actors to do workshops for Japanese aspiring musical theater kids. And it's just something that gives me a lot of joy. And I think musical theater is huge in Japan, and it's still growing, but rap musicals are not there. I don't think that rap musicals have been transferred to Japan in the way that we experience them here. And I think what's essential is the wordplay.

It's the enjoyment that you get from hearing the lyrical complexity, but then, but also the auditory joy that you get from these nouns and these syllables that are just kind of overlapping. And it's just like, it's ear candy, right? Like, and Japan isn't like traditionally a rhyming culture. Although way back when, when they used to write haiku and tanka, it was, but in kind of contemporary pop music and whatnot, rhyming isn't really emphasized. In rap it is, but that's not as mainstream as it is here, or expected of when people translate lyrics into Japanese, especially for musicals. So it's kind of like introducing a new concept. That fascinates me. And I feel like you could become this expert university teacher or something, just professor teaching how to rhyme and wordplay in Japanese.

I mean, none of this is, you know, official though, like none, none of it's like officially sanctioned or anything. So like, it's, it's all, I know, but I mean, there's got to be in the back of your mind, there's got to be something like, maybe Lynn's going to notice this and call me up and say like, Hey man, I'm going to license your translations because they're that good. I would drop down to my knees and just start crying if that happened.

[16:42] Alan Seales: No, I mean, they're good, especially, I like that you're continuing to do it too. Cause you said you've got three fifths of the show done. I was thinking too, another, another great show, recent show Six that has so much good wordplay. I was going to say, I recommend that next. If you want to take a break and kind of go back into, you know, singing and less rapping. That would be a fun show to translate for sure. And I think the concert pop presentation of that would actually perform pretty well in Japan. Women's rights.

[17:16] Gen Parton-Shin: Yeah.

[17:16] Alan Seales: J-pop sort of thing.

[17:16] Gen Parton-Shin: Yeah.

[17:16] Alan Seales: Yeah. That'd be good. Actually. All right. So there you go. You can take that idea. I give that to you. Dibs. So I actually wanted to bring up Broadway in Japan. So I'm glad that you brought it up a second ago. You co-founded a company and you bring these great Broadway performers. I know recently you worked with Telly Leung and a couple others that you're bringing them out there to perform in Japan and you've performed with Daphne Rubin, Ruben Vega and all these others. What, what is, I mean, what was the impetus to do that, to bring Broadway out there aside from the obvious of what you just said of, you know, musical theater is big in Japan. Side note, for those who don't know the Tonys, not this year because of quarantine, but the Tonys are often, are telecast to Japan. So Japanese can still watch the Tonys live, but where did I guess now that I say that it's obvious why you did it, but why has no one done it before this?

[18:18] Gen Parton-Shin: Oh, I, they have, they have, but I think it's an access issue. Really? Yeah. There's a huge language barrier. Japanese people very much rely on, you know, person to person introduction for their connections. And I, just from my observation, even Japanese producers at the top level, you know, maintain one to two key industry contacts and they rely heavily on these to connect them to anybody on Broadway. And I think, you know, my position and also, well, Broadway in Japan was my business partner's idea. Mayumi Ando, she was in Rent for six years on Broadway when it still was on. We actually don't do Broadway in Japan anymore. However, in that moment, you know, what we both shared as a vision was providing access to all the amazing teachers that New York has to offer.

I think there's so much enthusiasm towards musical theater in Japan, but obviously, you know, 6,000 miles away, there's the distance, or is it kilometers? I don't know. And then there's a language barrier. And so in order to provide the master classes, the really, really top level education that Broadway has to offer, you need that environment and you need the translators and also you need them to be there. I mean, that's the thing about the quarantine is like, classes on Zoom is just not quite the same, is it?

[19:53] Alan Seales: Oh, not at all. And you've also recently just participated in something, 35mm, a musical exhibition?

[20:01] Gen Parton-Shin: Yes, by Ryan Scott Oliver. Yeah, tell me about that.

[20:09] Gen Parton-Shin: Okay. I lost a bunch of gigs, like many other artists. And I reached out to the producer who I was supposed to perform in the Japanese original cast of Edges by Pascal Paul. And I was like, okay, I need work. I'm really good at this. I sent him my Hamilton videos. I said, do you have any shows that are coming up that I can potentially translate? And within like a week or two, he offered me the gig to translate 35mm. And I was like, I'll take it. Yeah, I'm actually really happy about that, because I don't know if 2020 didn't happen. If Corona didn't happen, I might not be doing that. It's the step in the right direction. Because I think if I do want to pursue translating and potentially, you know, I mean, the dream would be to translate Hamilton into Japanese officially, obviously, to start building credits is good for me.

[21:09] Alan Seales: Are you getting known? Are you getting, I guess, asked more to do translations in general, though? I mean, I guess, well, is the talent pool of translators a big pool? Or are you becoming this niche person inside, you know, a big pond or a big ocean, I guess?

[21:28] Gen Parton-Shin: I think it's quite small. And I think that's so I think I'm quite lucky in that way.

[21:33] Alan Seales: Oh, that's so cool. Yeah. And you've got such a, a, a cultural background that I think lends itself to do this sort of thing, too. Because as you were saying, a little while ago, that it's about the wordplay and the nuances and all of these things, right? That if you don't understand the context of the words, I mean, you can literally translate the word table to table, chair to chair, whatever it is. But if you don't know why they're using those words, that the translation, I think, gets a little lost, right?

[22:04] Gen Parton-Shin: Yeah. So I think where a lot of translators stumble is getting fixated on the literal meaning of a word. Whereas I think viewing, viewing lines or lyrics as a function amongst a big story is, is key to nailing the translations. Basically, what purpose does this line serve? What purpose does this lyric serve? It moves the story forward in a certain way, therefore, a certain nuance or certain information, certain sarcasm, you know, has to be conveyed. Sometimes it's a statement that that's actually a question. And like, this would go over the head of a certain translator, or, you know, like, Japanese people have different sensibilities, sarcasm doesn't really exist in Japan. And so therefore, it's better to change that into a direct statement.

There's just like all these little tweaks that you want to make. And then take idioms that are American idioms or English idioms don't exist in Japanese, obviously, then you want to find the equivalent idiom in Japanese. So yeah, that that is something that it definitely makes it easier for the Japanese audience to listen to it for the first time. And for the meaning to kind of like, drop into their brains without them having to do extra processing. Because as an audience member, when you're watching a show, there's so much information coming at you, visually, auditorily. And so the simpler, the more you can condense information into a simple form that is easily digestible, yet concise, the better. And I think that is the job of a theatrical translator.

[23:46] Alan Seales: Why do you think musical theater is so big in Japan?

[23:49] Gen Parton-Shin: Oh, um, I think Japanese people really like cathartic entertainment. Like amongst musical theater, they also like they love the tragic ones. They love Les Mis, they love Miss Saigon. It's like, I don't know, I think it's this like Japanese sensibility where they're very, very, um, they're, they're, they're quite, like, as a population, they're quite serious, right? Kind of like the Germans a little bit. So they like to kind of like, go in and feel emotions and kind of like, sit there and, you know, like, they'll be really quiet in the audience. And you're like, are they enjoying it? But they are, they really are. It's not like America where people are like, whoo. And with Corona right now, they're even quieter.

[24:50] Alan Seales: Yeah, I guess, I guess, looking into what you just said, I sort of pull out of it that, that as a, as a culture, it's a, it's a, like you said, it's a quiet culture, a serious culture that maybe over time and traditionally has been inhibited. And so this gives them sort of permission to, to, to feel whether outwardly or not. But yeah, I mean, the same reason, the same reason why I guess anybody really identifies with something that causes them to feel or to empathize, to feel emotion. It's something that if you're not normally able to do that, it gives you permission to do so. And like you said, it's a bit of a catharsis.

[25:29] Gen Parton-Shin: Yeah, I think so. I will say though, the prime demographic for musical theater in Japan are females aged kind of 30 and onwards, I would say. I think that consists like 70 to 80% of the demographic, maybe. And I mean, like, for example, there's Takarazuka, which is an all-female theater troupe in Japan. And women play male roles and female roles. And there are male, they're all female, but there are male role stars and female role stars, and they are absolutely worshipped by their fans to the point where, you know, it's like they fall in love with these actors who are, who live these roles, which is very interesting. I think it's a form of escapism, which kind of has a negative connotation, but you know, it's like fantasy. It's a...

[26:35] Gen Parton-Shin: It's very interesting. It's, it's kind of like, why do women like Fifty Shades of Grey? I feel like there's something in common there. I see where you're going with this. I agree with you. Yes, it's, it's giving permission to do or talk or think about something that previously is a little bit taboo in your circle or your culture. I yeah, I'm following you. I'm picking up what you're putting down. I get it. It's that romantic life that you might not have in your actual life. It's kind of the, yeah, so a lot of the really romantic musical theatre stories are pretty popular in Japan. They can't keep getting revived every year.

[27:20] Alan Seales: Well, I like that. So you are in a unique position to have lived and worked in the US, in London and in Japan. So do you have a preference or like a perfect place where if you were like, all right, you have to pick one place to do what you do? Where would you be?

[27:37] Gen Parton-Shin: Ah, man, that is three very different cultures. Yeah. I can't really speak for London because I haven't lived there in a long time. I think, you know, New York is the apex of the business. So to make it here is, you know, is still my biggest goal. And that's why I'm still in New York City. I think the longer I spend time in New York, the more I have to offer whenever I go back to Japan. And Japan allows me to kind of experiment with my bigger ideas, because bigger opportunities are available for me in Japan.

[28:24] Alan Seales: I like that. All right. So we'll wrap up this episode with the three standard closing questions I ask everybody. The first one is what motivates you?

[28:32] Gen Parton-Shin: Oh, what motivates me? I mean, this kind of sounds selfish, but just to achieve my maximum potential. I mean, you got one life.

[28:49] Gen Parton-Shin: Well, yeah, one life with maximum potential. But, you know, I think I can be very useful in certain contexts. And I would like to match my abilities to the market in a way that maximizes everybody's happiness and also mine.

[29:06] Alan Seales: Very cool. Okay. So the next question is, what advice would you give to your younger self and younger people listening now starting out down a similar path?

[29:13] Gen Parton-Shin: Oh, stop being such a people pleaser and prioritize yourself. No one cares.

[29:25] Alan Seales: And then the last question here, if you can only see one show for the rest of your life, but you can see it as many times as you want, what would you see?

[29:33] Gen Parton-Shin: Well, there are shows like Spring Awakening I absolutely love. But if that's the only show I watch, I feel like I get pretty depressed. I don't know. I mean, in the heights, maybe it makes me happy.

[29:48] Alan Seales: All right. Fair. Okay. So stick around, everybody listening, stick around at the end of the episode and we'll play against versions of My Shot and Helpless in their entirety. And then again, check the show notes if you want to watch the video versions of them. They're amazing. And where can we find you on social media?

[30:05] Gen Parton-Shin: At Ken Partinshin.

[30:07] Alan Seales: You can find me online at thetheaterpodcast.com, on Instagram and Twitter at theater underscore podcast on facebook.com slash official theater podcast. Please leave a rating and a review wherever you're listening now. This is edited by Matthew Hendershot. And Ken, thank you so much for this fun conversation. I've never had a musical theater multicultural translator before. This has been a lot of fun.

[30:30] Gen Parton-Shin: Thank you so much for having me. This is awesome.

[35:07] ♪ Musical number: "My Shot" — performed by Gen Parton-Shin ♪

[39:42] ♪ Musical number ♪