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DAVID HENRY HWANG: The basic story is that there's an Asian American playwright named DHH.

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ACTOR 1: The new play which Mr. Hwang describes as:

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ACTOR 2: A comedy of mistaken racial identity.

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ACTOR 1: Was inspired by the fracas over the casting of

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Jonathan Pryce as the Eurasian pimp in Miss Saigon.

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DAVID HENRY HWANG: That protest that I was actually involved in in 1990,

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and he subsequently,

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accidentally casts a white actor as the Asian lead in his own play.

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FEMALE ACTOR: We are looking to cast this role with an Asian.

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DAVID HENRY HWANG: Mistakenly believing that that actor is part Asian.

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ACTOR 2: But I think Marcus should be the next John Long or Bedi Hwang.

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ACTOR 1: At least they both look Asian. [LAUGHTER]

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DAVID HENRY HWANG: Yellow face, as a term,

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refers to a White actor going on stage with makeup in order to portray an Asian.

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The play takes the idea of yellow face and

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tries to look at its many different possible permutations.

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Not only what it means for a White person to play an Asian on stage,

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but what does it mean for a White person to play or pretend to be an Asian offstage?

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What does it mean for an Asian to be in yellow face?

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That is to really exploit and take as his or her prime identity the fact of ethnicity.

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DHH: After all, I was a respected figure in the community,

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the first Asian playwright to have a play produced on Broadway.

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I even appeared on national television with Lily Tomlin.

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DAVID HENRY HWANG:  My entire adult life,

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I have been associated in some way with being Asian,

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being part of this community,

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being a role model, whatever that means.

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I've been in yellow face.

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FEMALE ACTOR: The 1988 Tony Award for best play goes to M. Butterfly.

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DAVID HENRY HWANG: Throughout the show,

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we see DHH as somebody who starts to lose his bearings about being an Asian American.

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DHH: Welcome to a new day in America.

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DAVID HENRY HWANG:  At the beginning of the show, he has that identity,

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and then increasingly becomes confused about what it means to be Asian.

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To what extent do we as Asians play our ethnicity at certain times in our experience?

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When do we do that? Why do we choose to do that?

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Then also, can we choose our ethnicity in some sense?

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MARCUS: My background, it's so mixed up, it's hard to keep track.

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DHH: I can tell Asian when I see one.

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ACTOR 3: Marcus is 100% alright. 100% White.

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DAVID HENRY HWANG: Can a White person who is very involved

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in Asian things and Asian American things be in some sense Asian American?

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FEMALE ACTOR: In this day and age, a Caucasian playing the Chinese?

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DAVID HENRY HWANG: [OVERLAPPING] I think at this point,

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many years have gone by since the beginning of the identity politics movements,

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since multiculturalism was first put out there as a concept.

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The society has continued to move forward in many ways.

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I think that there are things that were

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great about multiculturalism and great about identity politics,

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but there are also things that were silly and contradictory and had limitations.

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MARCUS: My father is Jewish. [LAUGHTER] Do you know there are

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some people who believe that the last tribe of Israel landed up in China.

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DAVID HENRY HWANG: [LAUGHTER] I think that's really the contradiction

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that we need to wrap our minds around at this point in history.

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That yes, on the one hand, race is meaningless,

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it's a construct,

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we need to get to a post-race society.

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On the other hand, racist things still happen now and then and we have to deal with them.

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DHH: It's a new world out there.

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The demographics of this country are changing so

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fast and sometimes we think it's only White people who got to wake up

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but we've got to start thinking differently too.

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DAVID HENRY HWANG: I think the fact that the play questions in some ways,

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the notion of being Asian American and the importance of that,

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is where most of us are right now,

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that we recognize that we are Asian American

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and that we have a certain appreciation for our heritage and all that,

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and that doesn't completely define us as people,

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that your ethnic identity does not explain who you are.

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If anything, it's one piece in a complicated picture of who we are.

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But it's not the answer,

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the way that it may be felt more in the '70s and '80s.

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I think one of the things that the play is saying is,

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it's okay to be confused.

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My character in the play is confused.

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My character makes mistakes.

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My character does more stupid things than anybody else in the show.

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Hopefully, that allows maybe audience members to relax a little on the subject of race

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in the context of watching the show and perhaps

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open up to thinking about some of these ideas in different ways.

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DHH 2: Now, I am finally living my real life being in America.