David Henry Hwang (Credit: Courtesy of David Henry Hwang)
The three-time Pulitzer Prize finalist explains why he structured the comedy as a pseudo-documentary and how putting himself at the center freed up audiences.
David Henry Hwang’s “Yellow Face” opens like a documentary citing a source. “Email, received January 30,” the character of DHH begins, reciting the first line of Hwang’s satire about racial identity and family. The play hangs on two tentpole events, according to Hwang: “One is the protest against the casting Jonathan Pryce in ‘Miss Saigon’ and the second, towards the end [of the play], would be the charges against my father for allegedly laundering money for China,” Hwang explained. “Once I had those two real events, it just seemed to make sense that I could use a kind of stage-documentary format.”
But beyond those two events, “I just haven’t really affirmed or denied what’s true in the play,” Hwang told Broadway News. In “Yellow Face,” DHH is a Tony Award-winning playwright who finds himself in the spotlight when he objects to “Miss Saigon” casting a Welsh actor as Asian (in yellow face). DHH’s father is so proud of his son making the news; DHH not so much. Later, DHH finds himself in a bind when he accidentally casts a white actor in an Asian role — ironically in his play about mistaken racial identity, called “Face Value.”