Yellow Face

The genre-smashing investigation of contemporary race politics in America, in a revised and updated edition published alongside the Broadway production. Part biography, part comic fantasy, Yellow Face is David Henry Hwang's sendup of anti-Asian stereotypes and the traps he falls into searching for acceptance in a not-so-colourblind world. The play starts in the 1990s as the fictional DHH is casting Miss Saigon and unwittingly casts a white actor in the role of the engineer. This happens alongside the real-life investigation of Hwang's father, the first Asian American to own a federally chartered bank, and the espionage charges against physicist Wen Ho Lee. Adroitly combining a light touch with weighty political and emotional issues, Hwang creates a docu-style comedy that packs a political punch. The Broadway version of Hwang's incisive play is leaner and more adept at balancing the comedy and seriousness of the stories portrayed. The play also 'blurs the notions of racial 'authenticity' or 'racial-subversive' casting, with each actor playing various spectrums of characters not aligned with their race' (New York Theatre Guide). Yellow Face premiered at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles in 2007, going on to play off-Broadway at the Joseph Papp Public Theater later in 2007. After several other productions, it played on Broadway in 2024 at Roundabout Theatre Company.