Hwang discusses his expectations for the autobiographical play now that it’s on Broadway.
David Henry Hwang’s playfully subversive comedy Yellow Face received an Obie Award and was shortlisted for a Pulitzer Prize when it debuted off-Broadway at the Public Theater in 2007. Now it’s back—in a new Broadway revival directed by Leigh Silverman, the Tony-nominated director of Shaina Taub’s freewheeling musical Suffs. In what Hwang calls an “unreliable memoir,” the playwright—who won the Tony in 1988 for M. Butterfly—places a fictional version of himself, “DHH,” at the center of the story.
The play takes audiences on a clever and humorous journey that blurs fact and fiction. It revisits historical events sparked by the 1990 controversy surrounding the yellow-face casting of a white actor, Jonathan Pryce, in the lead Eurasian role in the mega-musical Miss Saigon. The work also examines allegations made against his father, Henry Y. Hwang, and the increasing prejudice faced by Asian Americans in this country. Portrayed as “HYH” in the play, Hwang’s father, a banker, saw his cherished version of the American dream unravel due to racist-tinged investigations into campaign donations that targeted him in the late 1990s.
The current Broadway revival of Yellow Face features Daniel Dae Kim (of Lost and Hawaii Five-O fame) as the author’s stand-in and Obie Award-winning actor Francis Jue as Hwang’s father. I recently spoke with the playwright about his autobiographical meta-theatrical creation.