Yellow Face

Content Warning: This section discusses stereotypes of, and racism against, Asian people. It also quotes anti-trans language from the play.



The setting jumps forward to 1992 when DHH produces a new play entitled Face Value. The farce is inspired by the Miss Saigon controversy, and DHH describes it as “a comedy about mistaken racial identity” and the social construction of race (17). He auditions several performers and admits that none of the Asian male actors suit the part. He had no difficulty finding effeminate Asian men to play the lead in M. Butterfly but cannot seem to find a “straight, masculine, Asian leading man” (18). He tells his team that there must be hundreds or maybe dozens of men that fit this description.

In a scene that acts as a play within the play, the Announcer introduces two actors, Rodney Hatamiya and Marcus G. Dahlman, performing a stage production of Go for Broke at the Marin Community Center. Rodney plays Sergeant Watanabe, a Japanese American fighter from World War II’s Lost Battalion, and Marcus plays the role of Texan Lieutenant Grayson. Watanabe decries the discrimination against Japanese Americans and their incarceration in concentration camps.