Alison Stewart: You are listening to All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. The revival of the play Yellow Face will make you laugh and think. If you missed it on Broadway, you can catch it streaming now on PBS until June 30th. The 2024 revival of the 2007 play from David Henry Hwang received three Tony nominations, including best revival of a play and best actor for star Daniel Dae Kim.

It makes Kim the first Asian American man to be nominated for a Tony in a lead role. The play is centered around a fictionalized Hwang, a playwright named DHH, who has made a name for himself fighting against yellowface in theater, white actors playing Asian roles. This really happened when Hwang led the fight against Miss Saigon, which used British actor Jonathan Pryce in a lead role in the 1990s.

In Yellow Face, DHH runs into a problem when he accidentally does the same, casts a white man in a role he wrote for an Asian actor. DHH and the actor don't come clean. He tells the world his actor is a Siberian Jew, and Siberia is in Asia. The whole thing comes to a head when reporters and the government start asking about investigating Chinese Americans for spying and money laundering, and that includes the act and DHH's father, a wealthy businessman who loves America.

The question is, does America love him back? Yellow Face is streaming now on PBS as part of their Great Performances series. I began my conversation with David Henry Hwang and actor Daniel Dae Kim by asking David why he decided to lead a protest against Miss Saigon back in the 1990s.

David Henry Hwang: I had based-- my career, I owed to earlier Yellow Face, protest people who protested in front of the Public Theater 10 years earlier, which led Joe Papp to start to look for an Asian playwright, and that was me, so when the Miss Saigon protests came around, it just felt like someone had paid it forward to me and I needed to be part of that.

Alison Stewart: This was all happening when you were starting out in your career. What did you think about the protests? Daniel.

Daniel Dae Kim: I remember thinking that they were necessary because as a young Asian actor, I knew what a dearth of opportunities there were for us. When you have a chance to play a lead on Broadway and that is no longer there for these kinds of reasons, it's problematic. At the same time, I also sympathize with my friends, who also said, well, when else are we going to be even on Broadway in a supporting role other than in a show like Miss Saigon?

It represents one of the few opportunities we have to do anything, even in the ensemble. I had some mixed feelings about it, but there's no question that David was on the right side of history there.

Alison Stewart: It was a big story. The point was made and it sort of was bypassed. The play came to Broadway. Pryce was told he couldn't tape his eyes. In response, you set out to write Face Value, white actor cast in the Asian role. It was originally a farce. What part of it made you think, "Oh, I'll write a farce?" A lot of doors slamming. I don't know.

David Henry Hwang: Yes, I just had this notion. After the Miss Saigon protest, which was sort of an early culture wars event, being caught in the middle of that, and arguably being a little bit canceled by mainstream media and opinion, I felt kind of traumatized and I needed to process that. I decided to write a comedy of mistaken racial identity about the question, what does it really mean to play a race, to play one's own race? I wrote it as a door slamming farce, and it became one of the biggest flops in Broadway history.

Alison Stewart: You say that with such joy, in a way. [laughs] When you think about it now, would it be a flop now?

David Henry Hwang: Oh, yes. I think--

[laughter]

I can have some joy about it, because after 20 years, the story has a happy ending.

Alison Stewart: What? [unintelligible 00:04:36]

David Henry Hwang: Well, in the sense of taking that concept, again, a comedy of mistaken racial identity, and coming up, 10, 15 years later, with Yellow Face, a different way to approach the same idea.

Alison Stewart: In Yellow Face, Daniel, your character is DHH. How would you describe him?

Daniel Dae Kim: He is a man who is wrestling with this idea of who his authentic self is and what are the masks that he's developed over the years to try and conceal who he really is, protect who he really is, and what does it require for those masks to come off? Even though he has the best of intentions, there are other parts of his personality that serve as obstacles to him being his true self.

Alison Stewart: What are his flaws? What are DHH's flaws?

Daniel Dae Kim: I would say a little bit of hubris, a little bit of narcissism, a little bit of inability to acknowledge mistakes until the consequences get so high that he's forced to acknowledge them. I'd say that sounds about right. What do you think, David?

David Henry Hwang: Yes, I feel like Daniel's being a little kind because I'm also in the studio, but I would say a lot of hubris, really. Really trying to protect his reputation as an Asian American role model, after making mistake after mistake after mistake in this play.

Alison Stewart: You'd have to be-- Are you really self aware? When you write something like this, you had to write your own flaws into your play.

David Henry Hwang: There are a lot of autobiographical works. It's just that usually, the author doesn't name the main character after themselves. In this case, I found, well, once I did that, I really needed to make him a character. Yes, there are ways in which he's like me, and then there are things that happen because it helps the plot and it helps the character have an arc and some redemption at the end.

Daniel Dae Kim: I will say that I give David a lot of credit for not making himself a very shiny hero in his own work. He's very human, more than human. I'm not sure what that means exactly, but--

Alison Stewart: People [unintelligible 00:07:03] get it. [laughs]

Daniel Dae Kim: He presents himself as the butt of many of the jokes in this piece. It takes a very healthy sense of self to allow people to laugh at you openly.

Alison Stewart: The original version of Yellow Face was around 207--

David Henry Hwang: 2007.

Alison Stewart: Apparently this script has 30 minutes knocked off the length. Intermission is gone.

David Henry Hwang: Yes.

Alison Stewart: What did you do to the script? Did you take fresh eyes to it? What did you do?

David Henry Hwang: I do think that after a certain amount of time has passed, both Leigh Silverman, the director, and I were able to look at the piece with a little more objectivity. We had originally intended it to be an intermission-less evening, but the show is just too long. I think most of the changes that have happened between 2007 and the '24 version just involved cutting, shaping, and polishing. There was stuff that we got rid of and then we didn't miss it.

Alison Stewart: Daniel, for you, you're on stage the whole time, almost.

Daniel Dae Kim: Have you seen the show, Alison?

Alison Stewart: I saw it Saturday.

Daniel Dae Kim: Oh, my gosh. Okay.

Alison Stewart: Yes. No, you're there. Creatively, what does that do for you, being on stage the entire time? Almost the entire time. What are the challenges of it? I think I know the challenges, but I want to hear them from you.

Daniel Dae Kim: Sure.

David Henry Hwang: I tried to build in a bathroom break.

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: There's a bathroom break.

Daniel Dae Kim: There's a key break somewhere in the show where I do get to use the bathroom. I think that's really important. I think it's really great to stay in the flow. It helps me stay in the flow of the play. I recognize that once we started doing run throughs, the audience really is seeing this show through this character's eyes. It's almost as if he's retelling and recounting the story. It requires him to be on stage even at moments when he's not necessarily speaking.

Like during a scene where we're introduced to a character, the character of Wen Ho Lee, based on a real person. He's there watching because all of it, as we find out later, is born from his imagination or his perspective on real life issues. The challenges of it, of course, are that as a performer, when you're feeling a little bit behind in a moment, you don't get that break to recoup, and you have to think on your feet and get back in.

That's been a fun challenge because there have been times where I've thought about a particular choice I just made and I realize you don't have time to think about that now. There's one other coming up, and it's not fair to your other actors if you're not present with them and listening to them. It's been a challenge, but that's been a great challenge.

Alison Stewart: Yes, that's interesting. I think I interviewed Saheem Ali, who talked about not having the intermission, how it just keeps you right there, keeps you right with the characters and what they're saying.

David Henry Hwang: Yes, this is a play that Leigh Silverman calls a shape shifter, in the sense that it starts out as sort of a documentary, it turns into just all out farce, then it becomes sort of political, and then it becomes very personal. To be able to deliver that to an audience in one shot and just have them take that ride with you from the beginning to the end feels like the most effective presentation.

Alison Stewart: In Yellow Face, you cast a white actor to be the lead in your play. It's pre Internet, so you can't really check them out. You heard it from a friend from a friend from a friend. Why do you think DHH goes along with the white actor? Why doesn't he just say, "Wait, wait, no, no, no, we need to stop?"

Daniel Dae Kim: I think for him, there's too much at stake. There's, as David mentioned, protecting his reputation. Especially as someone who protested the casting of a white actor previously, and again, hubris. This idea that he can get away with it if he chooses to make these choices. I think we've all been in positions where we have to make choices and sometimes the honest choice is the one that comes at the greatest cost.

Alison Stewart: Well into the play, Daniel's having a fight with-- DHH is having a fight with the white character. You call him a racial tourist. What does that mean to you?

David Henry Hwang: Ethnic tourists? Yes, the line is, "You come in here with that face of yours and everyone falls at your feet, you ethnic tourist." Exactly. In the play, the white actor, Marcus, not only gets-- David sort of covers up and gives him an Asian identity, which is invented, but then Marcus runs with that and becomes sort of an Asian activist, an activist of the sort that David is not willing or able to be at that point in the story. David is saying he just skims the cream and gets to have the advantages without any of the real consequences.

Daniel Dae Kim: Which I think is very funny too, because he's criticizing Marcus in that moment for a mantle he could be taking and he's criticizing the very creature he created. [laughs]

Alison Stewart: Well, it's interesting because the actor, the white actor is saying, "I like being part of something, as a Eurasian actor. I can be part of a community. I can be part of this." In your mind, when you think about it, is he wrong?

Daniel Dae Kim: No, absolutely not. I think that's what makes this play so human and universal. We all want to find a place of belonging. We all want to be validated in some way. Just because you're of one particular race or another race doesn't change that need. We all are looking for our home and our community. I think that's what makes Marcus sympathetic.

David Henry Hwang: I would also add it's complicated, because his need to be part of the community where his justification is based on a lie. He's not actually a mixed race Asian. Hopefully, it gives the audience stuff to chew over and discuss after the show.

Alison Stewart: I wrote in my notes, Rachel Dolezal, across the top. I thought about-- For people who are like, "Rachel Doazal?" She was a white woman who portrayed herself as a Black woman, head of the NAACP, and there was a big hoo ha. I'm wondering what you thought about that.

David Henry Hwang: Well, it happened after the original production, so I guess I thought in the original play, it seems likely to me that this sort of thing is going to happen as we move forward as a more multicultural, more diverse society, and that passing might end up going both ways. Yes, when the Rachel, I don't even know how to pronounce her last name,-

Alison Stewart: Dolezal.

David Henry Hwang: -case came around, and there are a couple others that have come up since, particularly in the publishing world. It's been, I don't know, either gratifying or horrifying.

Daniel Dae Kim: By the way, you don't have to not be a member of a particular ethnic group to start using the emphasis on identity and inclusion as a mask. There are a lot of Asian Americans who never cared about this issue until very recently. Then suddenly, they've taken up the mantle. The question is, how genuine is that? How much is that just going along with a rising tide?

Alison Stewart: Then to add another layer to it, in your cast, you have people playing against type. You have a woman playing a man. You have Marian Anderson. She plays Jane Krakowski. Kevin Del Aguila plays Ed Koch. How does this set up the audience to maybe understand the play better?

David Henry Hwang: Well, in the original production, the casting was essentially binary. It was just Asians and white people, and because society has moved on in some good ways, by the time we get to 2024, we wanted this production to be more inclusive. Then there was the question of, "Okay, what does it mean? We're pretty used now to actors of color playing white people. Hamilton certainly has mainstreamed that.

What will it mean for actors of color to play other characters of color, not of their own ethnicity? We try to be very mindful about the choices that we made. To me, in a good and fun way, maybe it pushes the envelope a little more. It's something that people can talk about too.

Daniel Dae Kim: Just FYI, it's Marinda Anderson and Kevin Del Aguila.

Alison Stewart: Thank you for the names.

Daniel Dae Kim: They might be listening. [laughs]

Alison Stewart: I'm glad you corrected me. The personal part of the story comes in. It's your father. Daniel, when you're thinking about DHH, what is DHH having a hard time understanding about his dad?

Daniel Dae Kim: Well, I think as a second generation immigrant or a 1.5 generation immigrant, there are expectations, I think, speaking as a 1.5 generation, that we can have of our country, that sometimes, recent immigrants do not have. What I mean by that is, for instance, my family, my parents, when they came here, they thought of themselves as visitors to this country.

They didn't think to question the issues that are problems in the country as much as to say, "We're lucky to be here. Take what you're given and work hard, put your head down," but as a 1.5 generation or a second generation who's grown up with the issues in our country, and there's more, I think, of a sense of ownership, and I'll just speak for myself. When I see problems, I want to raise my voice and say, "This place is not perfect."

I 100% choose and love this, choose to live here and love this country. At the same time, I can be a voice that helps shape this country. I think that's kind of what DHH and his father are going through. His father has an American dream where he literally puts himself in the shoes of-- Well, not literally puts himself in the shoes of, but he imagines himself to be white Americans, as part of the American dream of the 50s and 60s.

In my interpretation, David's right here, so he can comment, but David doesn't see the image of an American as necessarily Jimmy Stewart or one of the many characters that his father does.

David Henry Hwang: Yes, I think immigrants choose to come to America, and many of them, such as my actual father, had an intense love for this country. They made the decision to uproot themselves and start over again in a new culture. I think those of us who are born here, such as myself, our definition of what it means to be American also includes being critical, wanting to speaking up, and wanting to change this country so that it comes closer to fulfilling the ideals that define it best.

Alison Stewart: In the play, your father's being investigated by the US government. It's a serious charge, perhaps made with biased eyes by the government and by reporters from The New York Times. You redact their names, easy Google search to find out who's who. What did you want to show about that time, especially when it came to your father?

David Henry Hwang: Yes, my father, everybody can Google search this, got caught up in this anti Chinese investigations in the late 90s. He was accused of laundering money for China, essentially, in The New York Times. It seems important to revisit that both as investigation into the ways in which the perpetual foreigner stereotype engulfs Asian Americans whenever there is any tension between the US and any Asian nation. We saw that most recently during the pandemic which led to the spike in anti Asian hate.

One of the things that makes the play particularly relevant in 2024 is that we are currently going through one of those periods now where the deterioration and hostility in the relationship between the US and China has again started to impact Asian Americans, Chinese Americans. Chinese American scientists are again being investigated the same way that the Wen Ho Lee character, in our play, in the late 90s, was. All these things keep resurfacing in American history.

Alison Stewart: We got a text in it says, "Alison, we are reading this play as part of a program at Queen's Public Library, the Flushing Brants. Bravo."

David Henry Hwang: Thank you so much.

Alison Stewart: That's such a great thing to see. When I went to the theater on Saturday, I saw a lot of Asian Americans in the audience everywhere I went. What did they get to see?

Daniel Dae Kim: First of all, they get to be entertained. I think I love that most of all, because our job, first and foremost, is to entertain. When there are people in the audience who wait for me backstage or outside the stage door, and they say to me, "This is the first Broadway show I've ever seen," that is one of the biggest compliments that I can receive because it tells me that we're expanding the number of people who come to the theater.

I think that that couldn't be more important for a new generation of theater goers, to know that that's part of the entertainment landscape. I would also say that I think it's really important for young Asian Americans in particular. This show is about our history. Those who don't know who David Henry Hwang is and don't know what the controversy around Miss Saigon was, and it's important that they do, because very often, we're considered the silent minority, that we do not speak up for ourselves.

We did have pioneers all throughout history who did that. There are very necessary chapters of our history that are included in this play, like the murder of Vincent Chin, Wen Ho Lee. By the way, this is not just Asian American history. This is American history. I think if it spurs people to say, "What was that Vincent Chin story all about? Who was Wen Ho Lee?" Then I think we're serving a dual purpose.

Alison Stewart: Did you want to respond?

David Henry Hwang: Well, needless to say, we are very fortunate to have Daniel, because there are a fair number of Asian Americans who come to and people in general who come to see Daniel. Broadway is looking for, the theatre is looking for new audiences. That isn't going to happen as long as we keep appealing only to a narrow slice of the demographic, which, in the relative scheme of things, is becoming disproportionately smaller.

Pieces like Yellow Face, but also pieces about other communities that have been marginalized in the entertainment world, are so important in expanding our audiences, as well as our definition of what constitutes the American theatrical canon.

Daniel Dae Kim: I think that's such an important point because a lot of the themes of this play apply to anyone who's had preconceived notions based on how they look. That's not just Asian Americans. Muslim Americans are going through it right now, and a number of other groups.

Alison Stewart: That was my conversation with playwright David Henry Hwang and actor Daniel Dae Kim about their Tony-nominated play Yellow Face. You can stream a performance of the 2024 revival now on PBS through June 30th.