Yellow Face

"A chewy, challenging work that draws its comedy from racial misunderstandings and from shrewd dissection of ways in which we are all, at times, blind."—Daniel D'Addario, Variety 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-colorblind 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 "a docu-style comedy recounting [a] controversy from his point of view” (Washington Post). 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). Having originally debuted Off-Broadway nearly two decades ago, the core takeaway is this: Yellow Face remains as poignant as ever.

David Henry Hwang's stage works include the plays M. Butterfly, Chinglish, Yellow Face (2007 Off-Broadway, 2024 Broadway revival), Kung Fu, Golden Child, The Dance and the Railroad, and FOB, as well as the Broadway musicals Aida (libretto co-written with Linda Woolverton and Robert Falls, with music by Elton John and lyrics by Tim Rice), Flower Drum Song (2002 revival), and Disney's Tarzan. Hwang is a Tony Award winner and three-time nominee, a three-time OBIE Award winner, and a three-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He is also the most produced living American opera librettist, whose works have been honored with two Grammy Awards. He co-wrote the Gold Record Solo with the late pop icon Prince, and he worked from 2015–2019 as a writer/consulting producer for the Golden Globe–winning television series The Affair. His newest work, Soft Power, a collaboration with composer Jeanine Tesori (Fun Home), premiered at Los Angeles's Ahmanson Theatre, where it won six Ovation Awards. Its subsequent run at The Public Theatre in NYC received four Outer Critics Honors, eleven Drama Desk Nominations, a Grammy nomination for Best Musical Theatre Album, and was a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize in Drama.