Kurt Sanchez Kanazawa Confronts Injustice Through Performance

Medici Circle Scholar Kurt Sanchez Kanazawa and L’OPERA!

By Gamy Cortes

“Anytime you put pen to paper, whether you want to acknowledge it or not, you are political,” said Kurt Sanchez Kanazawa, M.F.A. student in UC Irvine’s Department of Drama.

Funding Creativity

Founded in 2004, the Medici Circle Scholarship supports academic growth and broadens the creative development of its recipients by awarding funding to each Medici Scholar for their specific projects. This unique scholarship program takes education beyond the classroom, allowing scholars to reach their creative and professional goals. 

Through this scholarship, Kanazawa was able to meet his publicity budget — ensuring that the call-to-action messaging of L’OPERA! reached diverse audiences. Beyond the financial front, Kanazawa faced a crisis of artistic conscience: housed in the historic building of the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles’s Little Tokyo district, the Democracy Center where his one-man show was scheduled to perform suffered an ICE raid just a week before opening. Whether through funding or mentorship, the Medici Circle Scholarship supported Kanazawa in overcoming unprecedented obstacles.

“There are Japanese Americans in 1945 who fully understand the world of Latino Americans in 2025,” said Kanazawa. “We must find ways to compare, contrast and combine our histories and see that this is not something new — this is repetition. We must ask ourselves, ‘Are we going to disrupt the repetition, or are we going to let history repeat itself?’”

Rediscovering His Voice

In 2015, on the cusp of graduating Juilliard’s graduate program for Music Kanazawa’s vocal therapist diagnosed him with vocal dystonia, a neurological disorder characterized by involuntary spasms of the vocal cord muscles, resulting in a harsh or squeezed sound.

After his diagnosis, Kanazawa went to Italy, having already arranged for his study permit and visa, but he canceled all his singing bookings and contracts, determined to never sing again. Already fluent in Italian, Kanazawa was approached for modeling and acting opportunities, among them an Italian procedural drama — a connection that later came full circle in his appearance in the U.S.-acclaimed series Grey’s Anatomy.

As an experienced actor, Kanazawa later moved to Los Angeles, where he was born and raised. During the pandemic, Kanazawa began to rediscover his voice — both literally and figuratively. Literally, because he was able to sing again after a misdiagnosis that shouldn’t have been given by a vocal therapist; figuratively, because political discourse shaped his understanding of racial inequity and the overlapping conditions of histories often treated independently.

Image: Advertisement of L'OPERA at the Democracy Center. Photo by Doug Mukai.

“In order to combat any systemic inequity, we all have three choices,” said Kanazawa. “One, to accept it. Two, to ignore it. Or three, to change it from within. I've chosen the third.”

With a couple years living in California, Kanazawa was able to find solace in UC Irvine’s uniquely inclusive approach to casting — specifically, its use of undergraduates in graduate productions and a 35 percent Asian and 24 percent Latinx demographic. This, he explains, resists what he sees as a broader perpetuation of inequality across top universities.

“If you're the only Asian in class and you never interact with any of your other classmates, you're just moving up in the acting world, eventually becoming the spokesperson of the Asian American community, unfortunately, you can never do an Asian American play. You can never play your identity in a way that you are the majority voice.”

In line with this emphasis on diversity, Kanazawa describes how scholarships like Medici, with the support of his patron, Dr. Steven M. Sorenson, made this kind of work possible.

“The Medici scholarship allowed me to interact with so many different artists, breaking down the barriers to collaboration. I learned so much from other artists in a way that I think every artist should ask for: to be challenged by somebody and to be reminded by how art can influence our lives.”

Figures of Inspiration

Kanazawa’s parents grew up in Hawaii. “Multiculturalism means something entirely different there than in the rest of the US,” said Kanazawa. That connection influenced his perspective on the arts — though, for a time, he feared that the arts were not a real career. This fear was influenced by his uncle Dingo who remained economically unprosperous despite having lived a full artistic life as a dancer — training with Alvin Ailey, performing in the original Broadway production of Pacific Overtures by Stephen Sondheim, doing two Broadway tours and two national tours.

Kanazawa’s awareness of racial politics helped him realize the tools necessary to activate many people, not just himself. This came to fruition when he became a figure of inspiration himself and started teaching an intro acting class at UCI.

“I think them seeing a figure like me teaching them not only allows them to live their full complicated selves but also gives agency to other people who are now witnessing them,” said Kanazawa.

Image: Kurt Sanchez Kanazawa performing L'OPERA at the Democracy Center. Photo by Doug Mukai.

Rewriting in Times of Political Tension

Kanazawa wrote the first draft of L’OPERA! in 2024 — a time he firmly believed a Black woman was about to become president. When asked to remount the play in 2025, he felt pressure and guilt, hesitant to tell a personal story amid politically distressing times. Jeff Liu, co-director of L’OPERA!, suggested that Kanazawa rewrite the ending.

Kanazawa took his advice. He kept his meta-commentary about joy, self-deprecating humor and narratives about his parents, but refined his central theme about two voices — originally separate characters — becoming one, which theatrically rendered his lived experience. With his newly discovered voice, Kanazawa plays footage of his own father being trampled by horseback officers during an early ICE protest, documented by The New York Times, a stark contrast to the playful, self-centered tone established in the beginning. 

“If you find your voice, what do you do with it," said Kanazawa. "Literally and figuratively, in the play, I find my singing voice and my political voice, and then the final message of the show is: this is the voice and it's telling you this is what's happening now.”

What’s Next?

In January of 2026, Kanazawa will perform L’OPERA to fund the Underground AZN Players, the first student-run Asian American theatre group, aiming to aid their own full production.

Kanazawa also has an upcoming solo show with co-writer Scott Keiji Takeda, No-No Boy, A Solo Show, an adaptation of John Okada’s 1957 novel No-No Boy — widely regarded as the first Asian American novel. With sponsorship from Drama Professor Eli Simon, Kanazawa plans to perform No-No Boy during the first two weeks of Fall Quarter 2026.

To learn more about Kurt Sanchez Kanazawa, visit his website here. To learn more about the Medici Circle and ways to support or apply, visit here.