Keisuke Hoashi


Keisuke Hoashi is an American stage, film and television actor, playwright, screenwriter and film producer of Japanese descent.

Background

Hoashi attended Stuyvesant High School in New York City, including three summers at the New York State Music Camp, before attending the Crane School of Music. He retired from music at 20, and became an alumnus of Troy, New York's Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, receiving his M.A. in 1993 in technical communication with a graphics certificate. He then moved to Los Angeles and became the NCR Corporation's first multimedia designer. He left NCR in 1998 to become a full-time actor. In 2005 he returned to Oneonta, New York as musical theatre instructor for the Hartwick College Summer Music Festival.

Career

Theater

In 1993, he was cast as a bumbling Japanese businessman in a college production of Anything Goes. In 1998, Hoashi starred in the lead role of Onizuka in Onizuka, Kona's Son, an unsuccessful musical play about U.S. astronauts. In 2000, Hoashi created the world's first martial arts musical comedy play, "Memoirs of a Ninja", for which he won five Maddy Awards, five Garland Award nominations, and was honored as being among "The Best of Theatre 2000" by NiteLife After Dark magazine. He earned another Maddy Award for his portrayal of "Sakini" in "The [Teahouse of the August Moon (play)|The Teahouse of the August Moon]" for FireRose Productions.

Television and film

Hoashi's television appearances include Glee, Mad Men, iCarly: iGo to Japan, The King of Queens, Bob's Burgers and Hawthorne. He played a Japanese reporter in the film The [Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement|The Princess Diaries 2]. In 2006 he wrote, produced, and starred in the television movie Cooking Kids.

Music camp

In 2006, he co-founded the New York Summer Music Festival music camp in Oneonta, New York, and is current director of communications and media, head of the camp's writing & acting program, and resident actor. His narration was featured at the 2010 New York Summer Music Festival's "The Lady Is a Song" concert, starring Ann Hampton Callaway.

Filmography

Television

Film

Video games

Recognition

Of Hoashi's performance in Anything Goes, the Daily Gazette claimed he was miscast, writing "Even when apparently seasick or drunk, Hoashi came across as intelligent and competent, not a befuddled, confused non-English-speaking Asian."
Of his original play, "Memoirs of a Ninja", NiteLite After Dark praised the production, writing "Hoashi's quirky lyrics and twirled-about concepts are a clever mix of fun, frolic and belly laughs with political, social, moral, ethical, and cynical commentary that hilariously sideswipe political correctness, stereotypes, traditional thinking, racism, sexism, ageism and every other 'ism' in between."