It does seem to be more than a wee bit narcissistic to do a play about yourself and then, even worse, to give the protagonist your own name. It's not unlike a one-person show, written and directed by the star, most of which can easily be summed up as one PR person once cattily confided as: "Me. Me. ME. Me."
It would be easy to dismiss David Henry Hwang's new play, Yellow Face, now playing at the Mark Taper in its world premiere, as nothing more than Me-ism. Yet there are some things that need to be said in 2007 about the problems of yellow face and the general representation of Asians and Asian Americans in the theater as well as the cinema and who better to say it than the first and only Asian American to win a Tony award for best play?
Hwang's Tony was for M. Butterfly, a play that I admit I have some affection for due to my own socio-cultural beliefs and because, in a way, it launched my rocky career as a theater critic. The arts writer at the small newspaper where I got my start was queasy about the gender-bending play and I volunteered and even paid for my own ticket.
The 1988 Tony award win for M. Butterfly seemed to signal a new era for Asians and Asian Americans: an end to Madame Butterflies, to men like Mickey Rooney, Marlon Brando, John Wayne, Katherine Hepburn, Warner Oland or David Carradine dressed up in yellow face. Black face was dead except for what was perhaps an ill-considered move by Ted Danson at Whoopi Goldberg's roast. Finally, we could bury yellow face as well.
Yet in September of 1989, Miss Saigon opened in London, reviving the Madame Butterfly story now transplanted to Vietnam and had a Welsh actor, Jonathan Pryce, playing the part of a Eurasian, originally with yellow face eye prosthetics. When the production came to Broadway in 1991, Pryce was allowed to reprise his role, something that Asian American actors and other theater people, including David Henry Hwang protested. Pryce went on to win a Tony although Miss Saigon did not win for best musical in London (Return to the Forbidden Planet) or New York City (The Will Rogers Follies).
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