David Henry Hwang Discusses His Play ‘Yellow Face,’ Now on Broadway
First produced off-Broadway in 2007, the work, more potent than ever, continues to speak to the times.
On October 30, playwright and School of the Arts faculty member David Henry Hwang and director Leigh Silverman will discuss Yellow Face, Hwang’s acclaimed comedy about identity, show business, and (perhaps) autobiography. Playwright and director James Ijames will moderate the discussion, which will be held at 7 pm at the Lenfest Center for the Arts, and School of the Arts Dean Sarah Cole will introduce the participants.
Yellow Face is making its Broadway debut at the Roundabout Theatre through November 24. Per the Playbill for this production, the play “is inspired by real events. The playwright’s fictionalized doppelgänger protests yellow-face casting in Miss Saigon, only to mistakenly cast a white actor as the Asian lead in his own play.”
Hwang discusses Yellow Face, its continued relevance, and his other work with Columbia News.
How did this production of Yellow Face on Broadway come about?
At the beginning of the pandemic, Leigh had the idea to do an audio-play version of Yellow Face. Audible partnered with actor Daniel Dae Kim’s production company, 3AD, and he agreed to play the character DHH. Then it took about three years for the deals to actually get done! After the pandemic was basically over, we did a table read, and were all struck by how much funnier and more timely Yellow Face seemed today than in 2007, and how it belonged on Broadway. Daniel decided to do the part on Broadway. Then we had a Zoom meeting with Scott Ellis, interim artistic director at the Roundabout Theatre, who said yes before the end of the call. So the play actually came together rather quickly.
Since the play premiered off-Broadway in 2007, what has changed in the culture in terms of Asian representation and lack of diversity in the theater and Hollywood to make Yellow Face still relevant?
I think the culture has moved toward the play, in ways both positive and negative. On the plus side, issues of casting, appropriation, identity, and “woke”-ness seemed more like niche concerns to a general audience in 2007, whereas now they have become central to American popular discourse. Sadly, however, anti-AAPI racism and hate have also entered mainstream consciousness, due to the spike in anti-Asian attacks during the pandemic, plus the current hostility between the U.S. and China.
You have revived a number of your plays, including M. Butterfly. What is that experience like, revisiting something you wrote with a different cast, in a different time?
I’m very fortunate that earlier works of mine have been given new life. I tend to be an inveterate rewriter, so I’m always trying to take advantage of the opportunity presented by a new production to continue improving the piece. For the Broadway M. Butterfly revival in 2017, I did some major restructuring. The changes to this current production of Yellow Face are more limited—mostly cutting/trimming, removing the intermission, adding a couple of new scenes, and tweaking the ending. I would estimate that the script is 90 percent the same as the original 2007 version.
What are you teaching this semester?
My usual class, Play Rewriting and Development, for second-year MFA playwrights.
What else are you working on now?
My opera, Ainadamar, with music by Osvaldo Golijov, about the execution of poet/playwright Federico Garcia Lorca during the Spanish Civil War, opened at the Metropolitan Opera on October 15. I’m also working on a musical adaptation of the documentary Particle Fever, about the discovery of the Higgs Boson at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, in Switzerland. And I’m involved in some film/TV projects.