Asians in "Yellow Face" - David Henry Hwang

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

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

ACTOR 2: A comedy of mistaken racial identity.

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

Jonathan Pryce as the Eurasian pimp in Miss Saigon.

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

and he subsequently,

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

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

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

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

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

DAVID HENRY HWANG: Yellow face, as a term,

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

The play takes the idea of yellow face and

tries to look at its many different possible permutations.

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

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

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

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

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

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

I even appeared on national television with Lily Tomlin.

DAVID HENRY HWANG: My entire adult life,

I have been associated in some way with being Asian,

being part of this community,

being a role model, whatever that means.

I've been in yellow face.

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

DAVID HENRY HWANG: Throughout the show,

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

DHH: Welcome to a new day in America.

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

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

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

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

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

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

DHH: I can tell Asian when I see one.

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

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

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

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

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

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

since multiculturalism was first put out there as a concept.

The society has continued to move forward in many ways.

I think that there are things that were

great about multiculturalism and great about identity politics,

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

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

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

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

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

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

it's a construct,

we need to get to a post-race society.

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

DHH: It's a new world out there.

The demographics of this country are changing so

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

but we've got to start thinking differently too.

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

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

is where most of us are right now,

that we recognize that we are Asian American

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

and that doesn't completely define us as people,

that your ethnic identity does not explain who you are.

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

But it's not the answer,

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

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

it's okay to be confused.

My character in the play is confused.

My character makes mistakes.

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

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

in the context of watching the show and perhaps

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

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