Yellow Face

One of the major themes in Yellow Face is the marginalization of Asian Americans on the theatrical, political, and national stages. The play deals with protagonist DHH’s struggles to articulate an Asian American identity during the 1990s, a decade marked by the promise of progress for Asian American representation but also by the racist stereotypes and prejudices that have historically rendered invisible Asian Americans in the national imagination. As DHH navigates his role as a cultural producer, he challenges the ways that Asian Americans are either non-existent or depicted as minor players, perpetual foreigners, and the “yellow peril.”

The play begins with an acknowledgment that events that are pertinent to the Asian American community often remain invisible or peripheral to mainstream culture. DHH contends that although many Asian Americans wonder what happened to Marcus, in “mainstream culture, […] Marcus, like most Asian American celebrities, remains virtually unknown” (8). The theme of the invisibility of Asian American identities continues when DHH flashes back to a decade earlier when he protested against Jonathan Pryce’s yellowface performance in Miss Saigon. Despite having recently won national recognition and praise for his play, M. Butterfly, a drama that criticizes Western imperialism and orientalist stereotypes, DHH finds few allies from the mainstream media or among his white peers.