An "Allegiance" Reunion at U-M with George Takei, Lynne Shankel, Stafford Arima, and Telly Leung

The University of Michigan’s School of Music, Theatre & Dance has the unique opportunity to bring the teachings from their classrooms into a once-in-a-lifetime experience with activist and actor George Takei.
Best known as Hikaru Sulu in Star Trek, Takei has appeared in more than 40 feature films and countless television roles, and is a Grammy-nominated recording artist and New York Times bestselling author.
He is also a civil rights activist bringing valuable attention to the LGBTQIA+ movement, and has, importantly, shed light on an underrecognized piece of American history: the forcible incarceration of Japanese-Americans in internment camps during WWII, where his own family spent three years during his childhood.
The many interwoven connections that conspired to make this U-M engagement possible start with Takei and Lynne Shankel, an SMTD professor who worked as the music supervisor, arranger and orchestrator on “Allegiance.” She was approached by the show’s director and her longtime friend, Stafford Arima, to work on the show.
Also starring in this production was actor Telly Leung, guest director of SMTD’s production of Stephen Sondheim’s “A Little Night Music.”
But to really bring these connections home, Brent Wagner, professor emeritus and chair emeritus of U-M’s Department of Musical Theatre, has been teaching around “Allegiance” as part of his course curriculum since 2021, and has known Shankel since her time as an SMTD student. In fact, he saw “Allegiance” in its original Broadway run and met up with Shankel afterwards.
“Luckily we were able to film the Broadway version-it’s been shown in theaters across the country-and because of this, Brent Wagner is able to teach ‘Allegiance’ as part of his musical theater history class,” Shankel said.
“He is very aware of pieces that expand the musical theater canon beyond the base of its history, which is a whole lot of white people. That is a big part of what he teaches, and a big part of why I’m here and what we do. The whole mission of the musical theater writing minor is to have different faces, different voices, involved in writing the material that we perform.”
Credited with starting the Department of Musical Theatre at U-M, Wagner began teaching “Allegiance” in an online-semester during the pandemic. He had Shankel and Leung join a Zoom class to speak with the students about their experience working on the show. In the time since those initial online class discussions, Shankel has joined the U-M faculty, and when Wagner asked her if she might speak to his class again in 2024, she said she had set her sights much higher.
This year, the stars aligned with timing and location, and she was able to arrange for Takei, Leung and Arima all to reunite and speak with students as part of her Monday Lab series-a weekly session for students to hear from guests and industry experts of different professional backgrounds, from casting agents, composers and lyricists to actors and directors.
“It’s always valuable for the students to go back and hear how a production originated and how it developed, because writing for musical theater is a very inexact science,” Wagner said. “These shows are tested and rewritten so many times, and even then, you really never know what you have until you put it in front of an audience. It’s a magical field, but getting there is a real challenge and I want the students to know they are a real part of this process.”