Playwriting professor David Henry Hwang’s Obie-award-winning play, Yellow Face, is headed to Broadway in a new Roundabout Theatre Company production premiering September at the Todd Haimes Theatre. The production marks Hwang’s ninth Broadway show.
Based on the controversy that surrounded the 1991 production of Miss Saigon, when white British actor Jonathan Price was cast as the Engineer, a Eurasian character, the play centers around a fictional version of Hwang, DHH, as he mounts his 1993 play Face Value, based on the controversy. DHH begins Yellow Faceprotesting the use of yellowface in Miss Saigon, but finds himself embroiled in conflict when he accidentally casts a white actor in a lead Asian role in his own play.