David Henry Hwang’s play Yellow Face takes its title from a racist performance practice that, for a long time, was mainstream in the performing arts: white actors wearing makeup to portray Asian characters. Hwang’s play was inspired by a real-life instance of yellowface: the casting of a white Welsh actor as a biracial Vietnamese character in the 1990 Broadway musical Miss Saigon. The casting choice sparked protests from the Asian American theatre community—led by Hwang—pointing out that this decision was a recent incident in the long history of yellowface.
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Yellowface in the 20th Century The Miss Saigon ControversyCasting Practices Today Reflect and Connect References
Yellowface in the 20th Century
Yellowface was a regular practice in Western theatre, opera, vaudeville, burlesque, melodrama, and minstrel shows for centuries—one notable example being Giacomo Puccini’s 1904 opera, Madama Butterfly, upon which Miss Saigon is based. With the invention of film and television came yellowface performances that reached mass audiences. Swedish-American actor Warner Oland made a career out of playing Chinese characters in the 1920s and ‘30s, including the villainous Fu Manchu and the detective Charlie Chan, both of whom had entire film franchises centered around them; Russian-American actor Yul Brynner gained stardom in the ‘50s playing the King of Siam (now known as Thailand) in both the stage and film productions of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s The King and I. Mickey Rooney infamously played Japanese photographer Mr. Yunioshi in Breakfast at Tiffany’s—even at the time, in 1961, a reviewer from The Hollywood Reporter commented that “the role is a caricature and will be offensive to many.” In 1972, David Carradine was cast as a biracial Chinese American master of martial arts in TV’s Kung Fu—winning the role over Bruce Lee.
The Miss Saigon Controversy
The Miss Saigon controversy took place at a time when conversations about diverse casting practices were just starting to become part of the mainstream. In 1986, Leslie Bennets of The New York Times reported on Actors’ Equity’s First National Symposium on Nontraditional Casting, a conference dedicated to exploring and raising awareness of “nontraditional casting” as defined by Equity as “the casting of ethnic minority and female actors in roles where race, ethnicity and gender are not germane to the character’s or the play’s development.” In addition, the founding of numerous Asian American theatre companies, including East West Players, Pan Asian Repertory Theatre, and Ma-Yi Theater Company had done much to increase visibility for Asian American theatre artists.
In 1989, Miss Saigon premiered in London’s West End. The musical, about an American soldier, Chris, and a Vietnamese sex worker, Kim, who find love in the last days of the Vietnam War, transferred to Broadway the following year, bringing two actors who had already won Olivier Awards for their starring performances: Lea Salonga, a Filipino actor in her breakout role as Kim, and Jonathan Pryce, a Welsh veteran of stage and screen. Pryce played the Engineer, a French Vietnamese brothel owner who works to reunite Kim and Chris after the fall of Saigon, in hopes that he might receive a visa to America in exchange.
Upon learning that Pryce would play the Engineer on Broadway, David Henry Hwang and Tony Award®-winning actor BD Wong wrote letters to Actors’ Equity protesting Pryce’s casting. For The New York Times, Mervyn Rothstein (who would write several articles on this controversy) reported excerpts of the letter. Hwang wrote, “Mr. Pryce is an excellent actor, but I would be equally upset were he cast as Boy Willie in The Piano Lesson.” Wong wrote:
There is no doubt in my mind of the irreparable damage to my rights as an actor that would be wrought if (at the threshold of the 21st century) Asian actors are kept from bringing their unique dignity to the specifically Asian roles in Miss Saigon, and therefore to all racially specific roles in every future production which will look to the precedent Miss Saigon is about to set as a concrete model.
Miss Saigon’s casting director claimed that they had not been able to find an actor of Asian descent who was suitable for the role.
At first, Equity denied permission for Pryce to play the Engineer on Broadway; in response, producer Cameron Mackintosh announced that he would rather cancel the Broadway transfer than lose Pryce in the role. Rothstein reported that Equity’s statement clarified that nontraditional casting “was intended to increase employment for minority actors” and “was never intended to be used to diminish opportunities” for other actors. In a separate article, Rothstein quotes Mackintosh’s response—a different interpretation of colorblind casting’s purpose. The producer argued that if non-white actors can play traditionally white roles, then the reverse should be true, “[W]e understand the depth of feeling within the Asian acting community and believe we share many of their aims We passionately disapprove of stereotype casting, which is why we continue to champion freedom of artistic choice.” His statement continued “By choosing to discriminate against Mr. Pryce on the basis of his race, Equity has further violated fundamental principles of Federal and state human rights laws, as well as of Federal labor laws.”
Following Mackintosh’s announcement, members of multiple Broadway theatres signed a petition asking Equity to reconsider. The loss of Miss Saigon would have put 50 actors and numerous theatre artists, technicians, and musicians out of work, and it would have meant the loss of $25 million in advance ticket sales for the Shubert Theater. Not long after, Equity reversed its decision, allowing Pryce to join the company on Broadway. In yet another article, Rothstein quotes Alan Eisenberg, Equity’s executive secretary at the time, “Many of us would have been happier had it been an Asian, but we deferred to the contract, Mr. Pryce's talent and Mr. Mackintosh's desire to have Mr. Pryce play the role.”
Casting Practices Today
The conversation around nontraditional casting has continued to grow and evolve beyond the Miss Saigon controversy. While yellowface, achieved through makeup and accents, is much less common in film and theatre nowadays, “racebending”—a form of whitewashing in which a white actor is cast as a character originally written as a person of color—has still taken place in films. In a 2018 article for Teen Vogue, Jenn Fang points to Ghost in the Shell (2017), Doctor Strange (2016), and The Last Airbender (2010) (the term “racebending” was invented in response to this film, playing off the mystical “bending” terminology from the world of Avatar: The Last Airbender). More recently, “color-conscious casting” has begun to take the place of colorblind casting as a best practice; in the words of Teresa Eyring, former executive director of Theatre Communications Group:
Color-conscious casting intentionally considers the race and ethnicity of actors and the characters they play in order to oppose racism, honor and respect cultures, foster stronger productions, and contribute to a more equitable world.
One notable example of color–conscious casting is Hamilton—since its first performance, the Broadway show has cast only BIPOC actors in every role, except King George III.
Since Miss Saigon’s 1990 Broadway production, every actor who has played the Engineer in a major professional production has been of Asian descent. However, the musical continues to be criticized and, in some instances, protested. In 2017, Michael Paulson of The New York Times looked back on these events and their contemporary resonance. For the article, Asian American actor and activist Pun Bandhu has noted that:
There continue to be protests against Miss Saigon across the country, and I think that’s because the Asian community is so tired of seeing ourselves portrayed in one way. In many ways, Miss Saigon is a colonial story... yes, they are victims of a war, but they are also characterized as opportunists, villainous...
In 2007, Yellow Face had its premiere; Hwang, in an interview with Jack Viertel of American Theatre, observed that the questions raised by the Miss Saigon protests were still relevant, as the controversy was about problems that are much bigger than just one musical:
The atmosphere in the country around issues of race and culture were in a pressure cooker at that particular moment, and there was so much anger and so many feelings of resentment on all sides of the issue that were not being expressed—any opportunity to rally around an incident became a vent for everybody’s pent-up frustrations on all sides of the issue.
References
Note: Members of the New York Public Library can access JSTOR and many other research databases through the library’s Articles & Databases page.
Bennetts, Leslie. “Taking Fresh Look at Casting.” The New York Times, 19 Nov. 1986.
Bunbury, Stephanie. “Jonathan Pryce on the controversy that almost sunk Miss Saigon.” The Sydney Morning Herald, 26 Sept. 2016.
Eyring, Teresa. “Standing Up for Playwrights and Against ‘Colorblind’ Casting.” American Theatre, 7 Jan. 2016.
Gelt, Jessica. “Authenticity in casting: From ‘colorblind’ to ‘color conscious,’ new rules are anything but black and white.” Los Angeles Times, 13 July 2017.
Hoo, Winyan Soo. “Bearing the ‘Yellow Face’: Q&A with David Henry Hwang.” The Washington Post, 22 Feb. 2014.
Lee, Josephine. “Yellowface Performance: Historical and Contemporary Contexts.” Oxford Research Encyclopedias, 25 Feb. 2019.
Lee, Robert G. Orientals: Asian Americans in Popular Culture. Temple University Press, 1999.
Paulson, Michael. “The Battle of ‘Miss Saigon’: Yellowface, Art and Opportunity.” The New York Times, 17 Mar. 2017.
Powers, James. “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.” The Hollywood Reporter, 5 Oct. 1961.
Rothstein, Mervyn. “Dispute Settled, ‘Miss Saigon’ is Broadway Bound.” The New York Times, 19 Sept. 1990.
Rothstein, Mervyn. “Equity Reverses ‘Saigon’ Vote and Welcomes English Star.” The New York Times, 17 Aug. 1990.
Rothstein, Mervyn. “Producer Cancels ‘Miss Saigon’; 140 Members Challenge Equity.” The New York Times, 9 Aug. 1990.
Rothstein, Mervyn. “Union Bars White in Asian Role; Broadway May Lose ‘Miss Saigon.’” The New York Times, 8 Aug. 1990.
Sen, Mayukh. “How Anna May Wong Became the First Chinese American Movie Star.” The New Yorker, 30 Aug. 2023.
Sullivan, Dan. “Colorblind Casting: It’s Not Yet a Tradition: When Black Is White, Women Are Men, And the Theater Is Challenging.” Los Angeles Times, 2 Oct. 1988.
Viertel, Jack. “Fun with Race and the Media.” American Theatre, April 2008.
Wilson, August. “The Ground On Which I Stand.” American Theatre, September 1996.
Published on September 9, 2024.