Yellow Face on Broadway Tickets

By: David Henry Hwang
Director: Leigh Silverman
Producer: Roundabout Theatre Company
Cast list: Daniel Dae Kim (as DHH)

A commercial failure losing millions of dollars. Miss Saigon. Jane Krakowski? All of these seemingly disparate ingredients collide, to great hilarious effect, in David Henry Hwang’s Obie Award-winning comedy. After years of playing around the country (and in Hong Kong and Sydney), Yellow Face, which grows timelier with each production, finally comes to Broadway.

Yellow Face follows DHH (played by Daniel Dae Kim) as he relives his failed Broadway play Face Value, directed by Jerry Zaks, and the protests for yellow-face casting in Miss Saigon…only to mistakenly cast a white actor as the Asian lead in his own play. A farcical look at the complexities of race and identity in the American theatre, Yellow Face is a cutting and humorous portrait of how we try (and sometimes fail) to tell our own stories. Digging into father-son relationships and Chinese assimilation in America, Yellow Face slyly navigates multiple terrains with great wit, affection, and theatricality.

What to watch for

• One of America’s most acclaimed playwrights, David Henry Hwang is the first Asian-American playwright to win a Tony Award for Best Play for M. Butterfly. He is also a three-time Pulitzer Prize finalist.
• Daniel Dae Kim is known for his screen work, but this won’t be his first time on Broadway: he played the King of Siam in the recent Lincoln Center revival of The King and I.
• Leigh Silverman is an acclaimed director and two-time Tony Award nominee for Violet and Suffs. She’s also directed plays on Broadway, including Grand Horizons and The Lifespan of a Fact.
• Hwang’s Broadway failure Face Value lost $2 million and closed during previews on Broadway in 1993. This epic loss in the playwright’s professional life inspired Yellow Face, a much more successful hit.