YELLOW FACE playwright David Henry Hwang © Lia Chang

The event is free. Seating is on a first-come, first-served basis.

Date: Thursday, December 10, 2009
Time: 5:30pm
Location: The Drama Book Shop
250 West 40th St.
New York
212 944-0595
www.dramabookshop.com

Yellow Face by David Henry Hwang
TCG, 2009
Paper: $13.95

David Henry Hwang is the author of the Tony Award–winning M. Butterfly, a finalist for the 1988 Pulitzer Prize. Other plays include Golden Child, FOB, The Dance and the Railroad, and Family Devotions; his opera libretti includes three works for composer Philip Glass. He was appointed by President Clinton to the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities.

Edward Albee was born on March 12, 1928, and began writing plays 30 years later. His plays include THE ZOO STORY (1958), THE AMERICAN DREAM (1960), WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? (1961-62, Tony Award), TINY ALICE (1964), A DELICATE BALANCE (1966, Pulitzer Prize; 1996, Tony Award), ALL OVER (1971), SEASCAPE (1974, Pulitzer Prize), THE LADY FROM DUBUQUE (1977-78), THE MAN WHO HAD THREE ARMS (1981), FINDING THE SUN (1982), MARRIAGE PLAY (1986-87), THREE TALL WOMEN (1991, Pulitzer Prize), FRAGMENTS (1993), THE PLAY ABOUT THE BABY (1997), THE GOAT OR, WHO IS SYLVIA? (2000, 2002 Tony Award), and OCCUPANT (2001). He is a member of the Dramatists Guild Council, and President of The Edward F. Albee Foundation. Mr. Albee was awarded the Gold Medal in Drama from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in 1980, and in 1996 received the Kennedy Center Honors and the National Medal of Arts.

Francis Jue © Lia Chang

About YELLOW FACE:
“It’s about our country, about public image, about face,” says David Henry Hwang about his latest work, a mock documentary that puts Hwang himself center stage as it explores both Asian identity as well as race in America. The play begins with the 1990s controversy over color-blind casting for Miss Saigon, before it spins into a comic fantasy, in which the character DHH pens a play in protest and then unwittingly casts a white actor as the Asian lead. Yellow Face also explores the real-life investigation of Hwang’s father, the first Asian American to own a federally chartered bank, and the espionage charges against physicist Wen Ho Lee. Adroitly combining the light touch of comedy with weighty political and emotional issues.

Lia Chang is an actor, performance and fine art botanical photographer, and a multimedia journalist. A former syndicated arts and entertainment columnist for KYODO News, Lia is the New York Bureau Chief for AsianConnections.com. As a photographer and videographer, Lia is frequently tapped to collaborate with artists, organizations and companies in establishing their documentary photo archive. She has been documenting her colleagues and contemporaries in the arts, fashion and journalism since making her stage debut as Liat in the National Tour of South Pacific, with Robert Goulet and Barbara Eden.

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Curator/Filmmaker Arthur Dong gives George Takei a private tour of his exhibition Hollywood Chinese: The Arthur Dong Collection, at the Chinese American Museum in Los Angeles on October 23, 2009. © Lia Chang

Hollywood Chinese: The Arthur Dong Collection exhibition is based on the Oscar®-nominated filmmaker’s critically-acclaimed, award winning documentary, Hollywood Chinese (2007), which shines the spotlight on a little known chapter of American film history, a century-deep history of Chinese American cinematic contributions, both in front of and behind the camera, and the vivid depictions of how the Chinese have been imagined in Hollywood movies throughout the decades. The exhibition is on view at the Chinese American Museum (CAM) at the El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument through May 30, 2010.

Lisa Lu, Arthur Dong, Nancy Kwan and Tsai Chin with Chinese American Museum board members and staff at the opening reception for Hollywood Chinese: The Arthur Dong Collection, at the Chinese American Museum in Los Angeles on October 23, 2009. © Lia Chang

South of the Border Chinese: Mexican Lobby Cards in Hollywood Chinese: The Arthur Dong Collection on view at the Chinese American Museum in Los Angeles through May 30, 2010. © Lia Chang

Captured and interpreted through the lens of the Chinese American experience, Hollywood Chinese: The Arthur Dong Collection is organized into a series of themes that define early Chinese American film-making and features classic and contemporary movie memorabilia replete with vintage movie posters, lobby cards, film stills, scripts, press materials. Drawn from Dong’s own private collection and amassed during the 10-year research for his production, the filmmaker’s passion for film is on full display in this sampling of the largest known collection on the subject of Chinese in American feature films–over 1,000 items– owned by a single collector.

Lia Chang with her fellow Big Trouble in Little China castmate Peter Kwong in front of the French poster of Big Trouble in Little China.© Tami Chang

A section devoted to the cross-over success of Nancy Kwan, one of Hollywood’s most visible Eurasian actresses who played a pivotal role in driving the acceptance of Asian actors in major Hollywood film roles. © Lia Chang

Oscar® statuette won by Chinese American Cinematographer, James Wong Howe for the Rose Tattoo in 1955, on loan courtesy of Don Lee, is on display. © Lia Chang

A selection of film excerpts from the documentary Hollywood Chinese, this one about the recently discovered 1916 film, The Curse of the Quon Gwon, the earliest known feature film directed by an Asian American, San Francisco native, Marion Wong, plays in a loop on a projection wall in the Wall-of-Fame room highlighting the distinguished company of Chinese and Chinese American Academy Award® winners. © Lia Chang

The full-colored exhibition catalog featuring an essay authored by Academy Award®-nominated filmmaker Renee Tajima-Pena (Who Killed Vincent Chin, 1988) is available for purchase at the CAM gift shop, as well as posters and DVDS of Hollywood Chinese.
!!!

ABOUT ARTHUR DONG
Arthur Dong previously co-curated the exhibition, Chop Suey on Wax: The Flower Drum Song Album (2006), for the Chinese Historical Society Museum in San Francisco. His film, Hollywood Chinese (2007), is the final installment of a trilogy, which also includes Sewing Woman (1982) and Forbidden City, U.S.A. (1989), that focuses on Chinese America. His other film collection, Stories from the War on Homosexuality (2003), brings together his documentaries Family Fundamentals (2002), Licensed to Kill (1997), and Coming Out Under Fire (1994). Dong’s work has been honored with an Academy Award® nomination, three Sundance awards, five Emmy nominations, the Peabody Award, the Berlin Film Festival’s Teddy Award, Asia’s Golden Horse Award, as well as a number of public service awards, including the Historymakers Award from the Chinese American Museum. He has also earned two Rockefeller Fellowships in Media and a Guggenheim Fellowship in Film. Dong served on the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, representing the Documentary Branch, and currently represents the Academy on the National Film Preservation Board at the Library of Congress.

ABOUT HOLLYWOOD CHINESE (THE DOCUMENTARY)
Winner of the 2007 Golden Horse Award for Best Documentary, Asia’s equivalent to the Oscars®, Hollywood Chinese (2007) is a captivating revelation on a little-known chapter of cinema: the Chinese in American feature films. From the first Chinese American film produced in 1916, to Ang Lee’s triumphant Brokeback Mountain nine decades later, Hollywood Chinese presents a fascinating portrait of actors, directors, writers, and iconic images to show how the Chinese have been imagined in movies, and how filmmakers have and continue to navigate an industry that was often ignorant about race, but at times paradoxically receptive. The story of Hollywood Chinese is told through eleven of the industry’s most accomplished Chinese and Chinese American film artists who share personal accounts of working in film. Ang Lee, Wayne Wang, Joan Chen, David Henry Hwang, Justin Lin, B.D. Wong, Nancy Kwan, Tsai Chin, Lisa Lu, James Hong, and Amy Tan are among the storytellers who have wrestled with being the other in Hollywood. Non-Asian personalities are also featured to point out the controversy over portraying the Chinese in yellowface. Two-time Oscar® winner Luise Rainer (The Good Earth, 1937), character actor Christopher Lee (Fu Manchu, 1960-65), and 1940s matinee idol Turhan Bey (Dragon Seed, 1944) give first-hand recollections on being yellow on the silver screen. Hollywood Chinese was produced, directed, written, and edited by Arthur Dong.

ABOUT THE CHINESE AMERICAN MUSEUM
The Chinese American Museum (CAM) is jointly developed and operated by the Friends of the Chinese American Museum (FCAM) and El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument, a department of the City of Los Angeles. Located within the El Pueblo Plaza in downtown Los Angeles, CAM is housed in the last surviving structure of the City’s original Chinatown. CAM’s mission is to foster a deeper understanding and appreciation of America’s diverse heritage by researching, preserving, and sharing the history, rich cultural legacy, and continuing contributions of Chinese Americans. The Chinese American Museum is located at 425 North Los Angeles Street in El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument, across from Union Station. Hours are 10 a.m.– 3 p.m., Tuesday – Sunday. Admissions are suggested donations of $3 for adults and $2 for seniors and students. Members are admitted free. For more information about the Museum, please visit our new website at www.camla.org or follow up on:
Facebook: search for “Chinese American Museum”
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/camla_org
Twitter: ChinAmerMuseum
Hollywood Chinese: The Arthur Dong Collection
Oct. 24, 2009 – May 30, 2010



Lia Chang is an actor, performance and fine art botanical photographer, and a multimedia journalist. A former syndicated arts and entertainment columnist for KYODO News, Lia is the New York Bureau Chief for AsianConnections.com. She has been documenting her colleagues and contemporaries in the arts, fashion and journalism since making her stage debut as Liat in the National Tour of South Pacific, with Robert Goulet and Barbara Eden. She is currently working on several botanical portrait commissions for the New York City Health and Hospital Corporation Art Collection and on a book of portraits of her favorite Asian American men in the arts and space.

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Photo Coverage: Rattlestick Playwrights Theater Musical Mix ‘n Mingle with BD Wong, Anastasia Barzee, Clarke Thorell, Cindy Cheung and Orville Mendoza
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Hollywood Chinese: The Arthur Dong Collection is on view at the Chinese American Museum (CAM) in LA through May 30, 2010.

Buried beneath the glittering façade of the world’s most fabled industry beats the stories of an obscure chapter from Hollywood’s golden past. On view beginning Oct. 24, 2009 through May 30, 2010, the Chinese American Museum (CAM) at the El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument will awaken these dormant stories in a dramatic new exhibition titled, Hollywood Chinese: The Arthur Dong Collection, based on the critically-acclaimed, award winning documentary, Hollywood Chinese (2007), by Oscar®-nominated filmmaker, Arthur Dong.

Captured and interpreted through the lens of the Chinese American experience, Hollywood Chinese: The Arthur Dong Collection explores the rich yet largely unknown, century-deep history of Chinese American cinematic contributions, both in front of and behind the camera, while offering vivid depictions of how the Chinese have been imagined in Hollywood movies throughout the decades. A singular collection of classic and contemporary movie memorabilia including vintage movie posters, lobby cards, film stills, scripts, press materials and even a genuine Oscar® statuette won by Chinese American Cinematographer, James Wong Howe, on loan courtesy of Don Lee, will be on public display. Arthur Dong serves as the guest curator for this exhibition.

“At the very heart of it, this exhibition is both a behind-the-scenes probe on the history of Chinese and Chinese American contributions in motion picture history as well as a long-overdue tribute to their pioneering and contemporary filmmaking achievements over the past century,” notes Dr. Pauline Wong, CAM’s Executive Director. “But equally as important, this exhibition will help to inform our communities about the transformative role of race and media and the immense power it continues to have in shaping public perception of Chinese American identity.”

Since the early 1900’s and continuing to present-day, a tangled web of race and representation has existed between Hollywood and the Chinese working in the film industry. The dual, conflicting identities of Chinatown, perceived by early Hollywood as being both dark and mysterious, dangerous and sinister, found expression in iconic films such as Roman Polanski’s Chinatown (1974) and a string of “B” movies such as Captured in Chinatown (1935). Portrayals of martial arts heroes and exotic vixens were immortalized in roles played by Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan, Nancy Kwan and Anna May Wong. The casting of non-Asian actors and actresses to play Asian roles was an industry practice that paved the way for the yellowface phenomenon exemplified in popular classics such as The Good Earth (1937), where German-born Luise Rainer played a Chinese peasant (beating out legendary actress Anna May Wong for the role), and the Charlie Chan detective series, where Swedish actor Warner Oland, among others, solved mysteries while dispensing fortune-cookie proverbs.

A three-dimensional adaptation of the documentary, the exhibition will give the public unprecedented access to nearly 200 pieces of movie memorabilia, many being shown in public for the first time, drawn from Dong’s own private collection, amassed during the 10-year research for his production. Although not an exhaustive archive covering the Chinese in American feature films, the exhibition does represent a vibrant sampling of the largest known collection on the subject –over 1,000 items– owned by a single collector.

“I didn’t set out to produce a definitive encyclopedic treatment of the topic, but rather, an examination of the first century of Hollywood history as seen through the lens of a dozen or so Chinese and Chinese American film artists–as well as some non-Asians who played Chinese in yellowface,” explains Arthur Dong. “My research strategy reflected this storyline and visitors to this exhibition might find that it weighs more on particular personalities, films, and topics, while others are either lightly touched upon or not mentioned at all. There’s still so much to discover and document and it has been a fascinating process to take my collection out of file cabinets and into a public arena.”

Among the many exhibition highlights are the surviving archive of pioneer Chinese American filmmaker James B. Leong, who produced the 1921 film, Lotus Blossom; rare production photos from the recently discovered 1916 film, The Curse of the Quon Gwon, the earliest known feature film directed by an Asian American, San Francisco native, Marion Wong; and a section devoted to the cross-over success of Nancy Kwan, one of Hollywood’s most visible Eurasian actresses who played a pivotal role in driving the acceptance of Asian actors in major Hollywood film roles.

The exhibition will span two gallery floors, as well as a portion of the first floor, organized into a series of themes that define early Chinese American film-making– and whose social impact continues to reverberate in today’s generation of Asian film artists. Blog-like quotes from Arthur Dong stream across gallery walls to offer a personalized dimension to this multi-sensory exhibition spotlighting wall-size vintage movie posters of iconic albeit sometimes racially-insensitive films.

A portion of the first floor will convert into a wall-of-fame highlighting a distinguished company of Chinese and Chinese American Academy Award® winners including Ang Lee (Brokeback Mountain, 2005), winner and five-time nominee, documentarian Freida Lee Mock (Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision, 1994) and two-time winner and ten-time nominee, James Wong Howe (The Rose Tattoo,1950) (Hud,1963). On display for a limited time only, Howe’s first Oscar® statuette won for his cinematography work in the movie, The Rose Tattoo, will serve as the crowning centerpiece for this area. A selection of film excerpts, including the documentary Hollywood Chinese, will be available in a viewing station and projection wall for visitors to enjoy.

A full schedule of public programs designed to provide visitors with a more in-depth understanding and enjoyment of the exhibition, including panel discussions, book signings and film screenings, will be offered through May 2010. All the programs are free to the public though reservations are required. A full-colored exhibition catalog featuring an essay authored by Academy Award®-nominated filmmaker Renee Tajima-Pena (Who Killed Vincent Chin, 1988) will be available for purchase at the CAM gift shop, as well as posters and DVDS of Hollywood Chinese.

Major funding for the Hollywood Chinese: The Arthur Dong Collection exhibition has been generously provided by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Additional funding was providing by the CAM Education Fund, Nissan Foundation, Community Redevelopment Agency / Los Angeles, The Gee Family Foundation, Cecilia Nakamura Arts Fund, El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument, and Friends of the Chinese American Museum.

ABOUT ARTHUR DONG
Arthur Dong previously co-curated the exhibition, Chop Suey on Wax: The Flower Drum Song Album (2006), for the Chinese Historical Society Museum in San Francisco. His film, Hollywood Chinese (2007), is the final installment of a trilogy, which also includes Sewing Woman (1982) and Forbidden City, U.S.A. (1989), that focuses on Chinese America. His other film collection, Stories from the War on Homosexuality (2003), brings together his documentaries Family Fundamentals (2002), Licensed to Kill (1997), and Coming Out Under Fire (1994). Dong’s work has been honored with an Academy Award® nomination, three Sundance awards, five Emmy nominations, the Peabody Award, the Berlin Film Festival’s Teddy Award, Asia’s Golden Horse Award, as well as a number of public service awards, including the Historymakers Award from the Chinese American Museum. He has also earned two Rockefeller Fellowships in Media and a Guggenheim Fellowship in Film. Dong served on the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, representing the Documentary Branch, and currently represents the Academy on the National Film Preservation Board at the Library of Congress.

ABOUT HOLLYWOOD CHINESE (THE DOCUMENTARY)
Winner of the 2007 Golden Horse Award for Best Documentary, Asia’s equivalent to the Oscars®, Hollywood Chinese (2007) is a captivating revelation on a little-known chapter of cinema: the Chinese in American feature films. From the first Chinese American film produced in 1916, to Ang Lee¹s triumphant Brokeback Mountain nine decades later, Hollywood Chinese presents a fascinating portrait of actors, directors, writers, and iconic images to show how the Chinese have been imagined in movies, and how filmmakers have and continue to navigate an industry that was often ignorant about race, but at times paradoxically receptive. The story of Hollywood Chinese is told through eleven of the industry’s most accomplished Chinese and Chinese American film artists who share personal accounts of working in film. Ang Lee, Wayne Wang, Joan Chen, David Henry Hwang, Justin Lin, B.D. Wong, Nancy Kwan, Tsai Chin, Lisa Lu, James Hong, and Amy Tan are
among the storytellers who have wrestled with being the other in Hollywood. Non-Asian personalities are also featured to point out the controversy over portraying the Chinese in yellowface. Two-time Oscar® winner Luise Rainer (The Good Earth, 1937), character actor Christopher Lee (Fu Manchu, 1960-65), and 1940s matinee idol Turhan Bey (Dragon Seed, 1944) give first-hand recollections on being yellow on the silver screen. Hollywood Chinese was produced, directed, written, and edited by Arthur Dong.

ABOUT THE CHINESE AMERICAN MUSEUM
The Chinese American Museum (CAM) is jointly developed and operated by the Friends of the Chinese American Museum (FCAM) and El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument, a department of the City of Los Angeles. Located within the El Pueblo Plaza in downtown Los Angeles, CAM is housed in the last surviving structure of the City’s original Chinatown. CAM’s mission is to foster a deeper understanding and appreciation of America’s diverse heritage by researching, preserving, and sharing the history, rich cultural legacy, and continuing contributions of Chinese Americans. The Chinese American Museum is located at 425 North Los Angeles Street in El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument, across from Union Station. Hours are 10 a.m.– 3 p.m., Tuesday – Sunday. Admissions are suggested donations of $3 for adults and $2 for seniors and students. Members are admitted free. For more information about the Museum, please visit our new website at www.camla.org or follow up on:
Facebook: search for “Chinese American Museum”
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/camla_org
Twitter: ChinAmerMuseum
Hollywood Chinese: The Arthur Dong Collection
Oct. 24, 2009 – May 30, 2010



Lia Chang is an actor, performance and fine art botanical photographer, and a multimedia journalist. She has been documenting her colleagues and contemporaries in the arts, fashion and journalism since making her stage debut as Liat in the National Tour of South Pacific, with Robert Goulet and Barbara Eden. She is currently working on several botanical portrait commissions for the New York City Health and Hospital Corporation Art Collection and on a book of portraits of her favorite Asian American men in the arts and space. The former syndicated KYODO News is the New York Bureau Chief for AsianConnections.com.

Related Articles:
In Arthur Dong’s Hollywood Chinese, Chinese Tinseltown Tales told by Asian Silver Screen Icons
BD Wong Performs in Symphony Space’s Wall to Wall Broadway
David Henry Hwang, Kathryn Layng and BD Wong at the Asian American Writers Workshop Literary Awards
Amuse-Bouche with BD Wong
BD Wong is a Tour de Force in Herringbone
Nothing is Sacred in David Henry Hwang’s Comedy of Mistaken Racial Identity
Francis Jue, At Home on the Stage
NAATCO’s pitch perfect Falsettoland hits all the right notes
Flower Drum Song: An American Story
AAIFF 09 Closing Night Awards and H.P. Mendoza’s Fruit Fly
AAIFF Karma Calling, You Don’t Know Jack and Children of Invention
Jeff Adachi’s You Don’t Know Jack and Tzi Chun’s Children of Invention Screen at AAIFF 09
Multimedia: AAIFF 09 Opening Night Screening of Claustrophobia
Schedule at a Glance: Asian American International Film Festival AAIFF 2009
Transcending: The Wat Misaka Story Screens at Rhode Island International Film Festival on 8/8
Japan Cuts Festival of New Japanese Film
BD Wong Stars in La Jolla Production of Herringbone 8/1-8/30
Asian American International Film Festival 09 runs 7/23-7/26
Review: HBO’s China’s Unnatural Disaster the Tears of Sichuan Province
AAJA member Lia Chang’s RED photographic exhibit part of Chinese New Year celebration
RED opening reception at Gouverneur Healthcare Services

David Henry Hwang’s Yellow Face, starring Francis Jue, Pun Bandhu and Thomas Azar, has performances at TheatreWorks through September 20.

Currently playing at TheatreWorks in Mountain View through September 20, Hwang’s Yellow Face, starring Francis Jue, Pun Bandu and Thomas Azar, is a scathingly funny and smart satire that blurs the line between fact and fiction, and is his most personal work to date.

Yellow Face playwright David Henry Hwang at the Public Theater in New York on January 6, 2008. (Photo by Lia Chang)

Seen through the lens of his alter-ego DHH (Hoon Lee), the story begins in the early 90’s, when David led the protest against the hiring of Jonathan Pryce in the original Broadway production of Miss Saigon. The playwright pokes fun at himself as an Asian American role model, lays out the backstage politics of the theater world and weaves key touchstone scandals that affected the Asian American community in the 90’s, like the campaign finance scandals known as Donorgate, the persecution of Wen Ho Lee, the Chinese American nuclear scientist who was accused of treason, and his father being accused of laundering money for the Chinese, most all but forgotten by the mainstream media.

Under the direction of Robert Kelley, Pun Bandu plays the playwright’s alter ego DHH, Thomas Azar is Marcus, and a dizzying number of characters are played by Francis Jue, Howard Swain, Robert Ernst, Amy Resnick and Tina Chilip.

Francis Jue in the lobby of the Public Theater on January 4, 2008.

The San Francisco native made his New York stage debut in Steven Sondheim and John Weidman’s Pacific Overtures in 1984, appeared on Broadway in Hwang’s M. Butterfly in 1988 and originated the role of Bun Foo in Thoroughly Modern Millie(2002). No stranger to accolades, he received San Francisco Bay Area Critics Circle Awards for his star turns in the TheatreWorks productions of Cabaret and Red; for his acting and choreography on Into the Woods and Pacific Overtures, and a DramaLogue Award playing Molina in Kiss of the Spiderwoman. Equally at home in a play or a musical, he’s played the title roles in Amadeus and the The King and I opposite Debby Boone, and has worked at the Public Theater in The Tragdedy of Richard II, Chay Yew’s A Language of Their Own, King Lear, Timon of Athens, Pericles, Hamlet AND The Winter’s Tale. Television audiences may be familiar with him as Dr. Fong on Law & Order: SVU and Dr. Yamagachi on One Life to Live.

“Francis is a brilliant actor of immense integrity and sensitivity. From the Emcee to Mozart, from Song Liling to the King of Siam, his work has a range that is truly astonishing. He’s a wonderfully open-hearted collaborator as well, a great man of the theatre,” enthused TheatreWorks artistic director Robert Kelley.

I thoroughly recommend seeing Yellow Face during the limited run at TheatreWorks in Mountain View. For more onYellow Face, check out my exclusive interviews with David and Francis, when Yellow Face was at The Public in 2008. Hwang received a 2008 OBIE Award for Playwrighting and Yellow Face was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

$24-$62. Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 500 Castro St., Mountain View. (650) 463-1960. www.theatreworks.org.

Lia Chang is an actor, performance and fine art botanical photographer, and a multimedia journalist. She has been documenting her colleagues and contemporaries in the arts, fashion and journalism since making her stage debut as Liat in the National Tour of South Pacific, with Robert Goulet and Barbara Eden. She is currently working on several botanical portrait commissions for the New York City Health and Hospital Corporation Art Collection and on a book of portraits of her favorite Asian American men in the arts and space. She is the New York Bureau Chief for AsianConnections.com.

Related Articles:
Nothing is Sacred in David Henry Hwang’s Comedy of Mistaken Racial Identity
Francis Jue, At Home on the Stage
Color-coding the American Dream
Race issues explored and mocked in Yellow Face
Theater Review: Yellow Face an entertaining look at race in America
Who is Ethnic Chinese anyway?
NAATCO’s pitch perfect Falsettoland hits all the right notes
Flower Drum Song: An American Story
Hollywood Chinese “The Arthur Dong Collection” on view at the Chinese American Museum in Los Angeles in October
Samrat Chakrabarti is featured in Claire McCarthy’s The Waiting City, which screens at the Toronto International Film FestivalONE Musical stars Paolo Montalban, Manu Narayan, Pearl Sun and Michael Winther
AAIFF 09 Closing Night Awards and H.P. Mendoza’s Fruit Fly
AAIFF Karma Calling, You Don’t Know Jack and Children of Invention
Jeff Adachi’s You Don’t Know Jack and Tzi Chun’s Children of Invention Screen at AAIFF 09
Multimedia: AAIFF 09 Opening Night Screening of Claustrophobia
Schedule at a Glance: Asian American International Film Festival AAIFF 2009
Transcending: The Wat Misaka Story Screens at Rhode Island International Film Festival on 8/8
Japan Cuts Festival of New Japanese Film
BD Wong Stars in La Jolla Production of Herringbone 8/1-8/30
Asian American International Film Festival 09 runs 7/23-7/26
In Arthur Dong’s Hollywood Chinese, Chinese Tinseltown Tales told by Asian Silver Screen Icons
Multimedia: Asian Pacific American Month Celebration at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Hanami Daiko at Drom
Wat Misaka, First Person of Color Drafted in NBA
Thom Sesma Stars as Scar in Disney’s The Lion King at Mandalay Bay
Review: HBO’s China’s Unnatural Disaster the Tears of Sichuan Province
BD Wong Performs in Symphony Space’s Wall to Wall Broadway
Different Keys: Japanese Women Pianists and Photos by George Hirose at Drom
Matsuri Sawagi at Drom
On Ensemble, Kenny Endo and Kaoru Watanabe in Taiko x2 at Cerritos Center
Alex Nguyen and the Jazz Conceptions Orchestra
Exordium Quartet at Drom
Envisioning Diaspora: Asian American Visual Arts Collectives book talk and art conversation with author Alexandra ChangAAJA member Lia Chang’s RED photographic exhibit part of Chinese New Year celebration
RED opening reception at Gouverneur Healthcare Services
Amuse-Bouche with BD Wong
David Henry Hwang, Kathryn Layng and BD Wong at the Asian American Writers Workshop Literary Awards
Thom Sesma, Peter Kim, Andrew Cristi Star in Durango
BD Wong is a Tour de Force in Herringbone
Amuse Bouche with Manu NarayanThe Romance of Magno Rubio

Spotlight on Shanghai Moon’s Thom Sesma

Writers’ Theatre has appointed Stuart Carden associate artistic director.

“I’m so excited to be in collaboration with Stuart,” said Michael Halberstam, executive director the Writers’. “He has a rich background in literary development, a keen and ambitious scope of work as a director and a passion for the administrative challenges that come with supporting artistic direction. In a very short time I believe we will see Stuart’s strength of perspective and influence find its way onto the stages of Writers’ Theatre.”

Says Carden:

“I’m thrilled to be back home in the thriving Chicago theatre community as Writers’ Theatre’s new associate artistic director. Michael Halberstam and Kathryn Lipuma have created something extraordinary in Glencoe and I’m honored to join the passionate and vibrant group of artists and theater-makers that call Writers’ home. Through the course of my career my theatrical raison d’être has been helping bring new and diverse voices to the stage and I’m looking forward to bringing that passion for new work to Writers’ exciting Literary Development Initiative.”

Stuart Carden joins Writers’ Theatre as associate artistic director after two seasons at City Theatre Company in Pittsburgh where he was associate artistic director. As a new play specialist, Stuart has helped to develop over thirty plays, twelve of which he directed in their world premiere productions. Notable regional, U.S., and world premieres include works by Martin Crimp, David Henry Hwang, Tristine Skyler, Jeffrey Hatcher, Shishir Kurup, Richard Dresser and Yussef El Guindi. Last season his production of Martin McDonagh’s The Lieutenant of Inishmore at The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis garnered five Kevin Kline nominations including “Outstanding Production” and “Outstanding Director.”

In Chicago he directed the world premiere production of Shishir Kurup’s The Merchant on Venice at Silk Road Theatre Project, which was named one of the top ten plays of 2007 by the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times and Time Out Chicago. Other recent new play work includes directing Mary’s Wedding, The Pillowman, Stones in his Pockets, A Picasso, The Moonlight Room, 10 Acrobats in an Amazing Leap of Faith, Big Love and Back of the Throat. Classical and classically inspired directing projects include The False Servant, Spring Awakening, Life is a Dream, The Crucible, The Game of Love and Chance, Miss Julie, A Streetcar Named Desire and his own adaptation of Nikolai Gogol’s Diary of a Madman.

Stuart has taught acting, directing and movement at Carnegie Mellon University, The Hartt School, Loyola University, Beloit College and Act One Studios. He holds an M.F.A. in directing from Carnegie Mellon University and is a member of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society. In the 2009/10 season Stuart is slated to direct David Harrower’s Blackbird at City Theatre Company and a play very familiar to Writers’ Theatre audiences, Crime and Punishment adapted by Curt Columbus and Marilyn Campbell, at The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis.

For more info about the Writers’ Theatre, please visit www.writerstheatre

h/t BroadwayWorld.com

Tune into the award-winning documentary American Masters: Hollywood Chinese by Arthur Dong, which premieres on Wednesday, May 27, 2009 at 9 p.m. (ET) on PBS (check local listings), during Asian Pacific American Heritage Month. The film features a treasure trove of clips, punctuated with personal accounts from the movie industry’s most accomplished Chinese and Chinese American talent.

From the sexed-up Suzie Wong to the kung fu fighting Bruce Lee, THIRTEEN’s American Masters tackles issues of race and representation in Hollywood Chinese. The 90-minute film illuminates a century of Chinese American cinematic history, from rare silent classics such as Marion Wong’s The Curse of Quon Gwon (1916) to the contemporary critical and commercial success of Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain (2005).

“American Masters is proud to share with our viewers the extraordinary stories of pioneering Chinese and Chinese American artists in Hollywood,” says Susan Lacy, creator and executive producer of American Masters, a six-time winner of the Emmy Award for Outstanding Primetime Non-Fiction Series. “Their immeasurable contribution to American cinema continues today with a new wave of critically-acclaimed Asian films and Oscar-winning blockbusters. The film gives strong perspective to this little-known chapter of motion picture history.”

American feature films often portray the Chinese as exotic and devious characters – or simply the “other” – reflecting the entertainment industry’s inherent racial prejudices as well as its fascination with the Far East. Hollywood Chinese features candid interviews and back lot stories from artists in front of and behind the camera, including Ang Lee (Brokeback Mountain, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), Wayne Wang (Chan Is Missing, The Joy Luck Club, Smoke), Joan Chen (The Last Emperor, Saving Face, Xiu-Xiu, Autumn in New York - the latter two as director), David Henry Hwang (Possession, Golden Gate, M. Butterfly), Justin Lin (Better Luck Tomorrow, The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift), B.D. Wong (Father of the Bride, Jurassic Park, Mulan), Nancy Kwan (The World of Suzie Wong, Flower Drum Song), Lisa Lu (The Last Emperor, The Joy Luck Club), James Hong (Big Trouble in Little China, Blade Runner), Tsai Chin (The Joy Luck Club, Memoirs of a Geisha), Amy Tan (The Joy Luck Club), Christopher Lee and Luise Rainer. The documentary chronicles the full gamut of Chinese representation in Hollywood. It brings to light the controversial yellowface casting of Luise Rainer in The Good Earth (1937) and the stereotyped caricatures played by Chinese American actors such as James Hong in Bloodsport 1 & 2 (1988, 1996). It also addresses the eventual trend of Asian empowerment in films such as Flower Drum Song (1961) staring Nancy Kwan and the film-adaptation of Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club (1993) directed by Wayne Wang.

American Masters: Hollywood Chinese is a production of DeepFocus Productions, Inc. in association with WNET.ORG and the Center for Asian American Media for PBS. The documentary is produced, directed, written and edited by Academy Award® nominee and triple Sundance award-winning filmmaker, Arthur Dong (Licensed to Kill, Coming Out Under Fire, Forbidden City, U.S.A.).  Susan Lacy is the creator and executive producer of American Masters.

CHECK OUT THESE VIDEO-AUDIO STREAMS ONLINE: KGO TV NEWS STORY ON THE CURSE OF QUON GWON FORUM – KQED RADIO (scroll to April 11, 10am) KTSF CHINESE NEWS STORY (scroll to April 15, second news story INTERVIEW WITH NANCY KWAN AND ARTHUR DONG AT TORONTO

Related Articles: Hooray for HOLLYWOOD CHINESE HOLLYWOOD CHINESE Opens in SF, Oakland and Pasadena Arthur Dong Receives Golden Horse Award for HOLLYWOOD CHINESE Arthur Dong Shines the Spotlight on Chinese in American Films in New Documentary

Related Chinese Americans in the Arts Articles:

BD Wong Performs in Symphony Space’s Wall to Wall Broadway

David Henry Hwang, Kathryn Layng and BD Wong at the Asian American Writers Workshop Literary Awards

BD Wong is a Tour de Force in Herringbone

Nothing is Sacred in David Henry Hwang’s Comedy of Mistaken Racial Identity

Francis Jue, At Home on the Stage

Tina Chen Stars in The Shanghai Gesture

Lucia Hwong Gordon Among Women’s Project’s Women of Achievement Honorees

www.hollywoodchinese.com

(l-r) San Francisco-based civil rights attorney and AALDEF co-founder Dale Minami; New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, Pulitzer Prize-winning co-authors and human rights activists and Sandra Leung, Senior VP and General Counsel, Bristol-Myers Squibb received 2009 Justice in Action Awards from the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund at their 35th Anniversary gala dinner, at PIER SIXTY, Chelsea Piers in New York on March 26, 2009. (Photo by Lia Chang)

Congratulations to the New York-based Asian American Legal Defense and Education (AALDEF) on its 35th Anniversary of protecting and promoting the civil rights of Asian Americans.

Click the arrow below for AALDEF’s 35th Anniversary Gala slideshow

AALDEF kicked off the celebration with a visit to the New York Stock Exchange on Wednesday, March 25. AALDEF board president Denley Y. Chew rang The Closing Bell. Special guests included Tony Award-winning playwright David Henry Hwang and Tony Award-winning actor B.D. Wong, who were joined by AALDEF executive director Margaret Fung, assistant director Lillian Ling and several AALDEF Board members.
Click here for video of The Closing Bell.

AALDEF’s 35th anniversary gala was held at PIER SIXTY, Chelsea Piers in New York City on Thursday, March 26. ABC News Correspondent Juju Chang and Columbia Journalism Professor Sree Sreenivasan emceed the festivities.

ABC News Correspondent Juju Chang and Columbia Journalism Professor Sree Sreenivasan emceed the festivities. Photo by Lia Chang

The 2009 Justice in Action Awards were presented to New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, Pulitzer Prize-winning co-authors and human rights activists; Sandra Leung, Senior VP and General Counsel, Bristol-Myers Squibb; and San Francisco-based civil rights attorney and AALDEF co-founder Dale Minami.

http://www.aaldef.org

AALDEF Makes Bill Cunningham’s New York Times Sunday Benefit Party Page

AALDEF Rings The Closing Bell

AALDEF Honors Dale Minami, Nicholas D. Kristof, Sheryl Wudunn and Sandra Leung with 2009 Justice in Action Awards on 3/26

Fred Korematsu, American Hero and Civil Rights Activist Dies at 86

AAJA Reacts to News of Roxana Saberi’s Release, Laura Ling and Euna Lee Still in Custody in North Korea

Review:  China’s Unnatural Disaster – The Tears of Sichuan Province

An Active Vision: Beverly Umehara…Labor Activist…1945-1999

The Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF) kicked off the celebration of it’s 35th anniversary with a visit to the New York Stock Exchange on Wednesday, March 25. AALDEF board president Denley Y. Chew rang The Closing Bell. Special guests included Sheryl WuDunn, one of the 2009 AALDEF Justice in Action Award recipients, Tony Award-winning playwright David Henry Hwang and Tony Award-winning actor B.D. Wong. They were joined by AALDEF executive director Margaret Fung, assistant director Lillian Ling and several AALDEF Board members.

NYSE

AALDEF’s 35th anniversary gala will take place on Thursday, March 26 at PIER SIXTY, Chelsea Piers, New York City. The 2009 Justice in Action Awards will be presented to New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, Pulitzer Prize-winning co-authors and human rights activists; Sandra Leung, Senior VP and General Counsel, Bristol-Myers Squibb; and San Francisco-based civil rights attorney and AALDEF co-founder Dale Minami. For more information, contact Lillian Ling, 212.966.5932 x202.

About The Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF)
The Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF) is a New York-based national organization that protects and promotes the civil rights of Asian Americans. By combining litigation, advocacy, community education, and organizing, AALDEF works with Asian American communities across the country to secure human rights for all. Key program areas include economic justice for workers, immigrant rights, educational equity and youth rights, voting rights and civic participation, affordable housing and equitable development, and the elimination of hate violence, police misconduct and human trafficking.

http://www.aaldef.org

Tony Award-winning playwright, David Henry Hwang, is known as the preeminent Asian American dramatist in the US. His breakthrough play, M. Butterfly—a complicated story of espionage and mistaken sexual identity—received a Tony Award in 1988 and a Pulitzer Prize in 1989.

Born in Los Angeles to a father who worked as a banker and a mother was a piano professor, David himself is educated at Stanford University, from which he earned his B.A. in English in 1979. He became interested in theater after attending plays at the American Conservatory in San Francisco and quickly gave up his marginal interest in law.

David Henry Hwang has been awarded numerous grants including fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations, New York State Council on the Arts, and Pew Charitable Trusts.

How did he get started?

David Henry Hwang had written and produced his first play, FOB (”fresh off the boat”) by his senior year. He talks about immigrants being expected to abandon Chinese identity if they are to fit into mainstream American culture. Portraying major characters as figures from Chinese mythology, and produced by Joseph Papp at New York’s Public Theater in 1980, David Henry Hwang still attributes much of his success to Jean.

It’s important to realize that when F.O.B. was produced at the Public, I was twenty-three [...] Joe said that he would produce anything I wrote, and subsequently he was quite good to his word and produced my next four plays. To have that sort of context and that confidence from a producer so that one is not working in a vacuum is a wonderful luxury for a developing writer. [...] Always having had the resources of the Public, knowing that I would have access to actors and a stage and directors since a very early age and a very early point in my career, I think really helped me develop as a playwright.

Educational Pedigree 
After a brief stint as a writing teacher at a Menlo Park high school, David Henry Hwang attended the Yale University School of Drama. Although he didn’t stay to complete a degree, he studied theater history before leaving for the professional theaters of New York City.

David Henry Hwang is best-known for his play M. Butterfly, based on Giacomo Puccini’s opera Madama Butterfly. Soon after premiering on Broadway in 1988, he became the first Asian American to win the Tony Award for Best Play. He has since pursued interests in opera, film, and the musical theater.

David Henry Hwang is also at work on a new musical —Bruce Lee: Journey to the West, with music and lyrics by David Yazbeck— as well as the screenplay version of the novel Across the Nightingale Floor.

Source
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Henry_Hwang
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0404847/bio
http://www.bedfordstmartins.com/literature/bedlit/authors_depth/hwang.htm

Should I be bitter that I get an assignment and it doesn’t get published? No…let me just use this opportunity to blog about this wonderful East West Players production of Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club at the David Henry  Hwang Theatre . It’s about mothers and daughters, but mostly about what mothers do for their children.

This is the last weekend, so don’t delay. Take your mother. Take your father. Take your family. Then go to Chinatown or Little Tokyo and remember what the holidays are really about.

Playwright David Henry Hwang, his wife actress Kathryn Layng and actor BD Wong celebrate the 20th anniversary of M. Butterfly at the 11th annual Asian American Literary Awards Ceremony, produced by the Asian American Writers Workshop held at New York University's Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Film Center in New York on December 8, 2008.

Tony Award-winning playwright David Henry Hwang was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Asian American Writers’ Workshop at the Eleventh Annual Asian American Literary Awards Ceremony from M. Butterfly costume and stage designer Eiko Ishioka, to commemorate the 20th anniversary of his groundbreaking play M. Butterfly at New York University’s Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Film Center in New York, on Monday, December 8. Mr. Hwang and Law & Order SVU actor BD Wong, who dazzled audiences in his Broadway debut in M. Butterfly and garnered the Outer Critic’s Circle Award, Theatre World Award, Drama Desk Award, Clarence Derwent Award, and the Tony Award for his star turn, read passages from the play, followed by a chat moderated by Oskar Eustis, the Artistic Director of The Public Theater.

This year’s Asian American Writers’ Workshop’s Asian American Literary Award honorees include Fiction award-winner Mohsin Hamid for The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Nonfiction award-winner Vijay Prashad for The Darker Nations, and Poetry award-winner Sun Yung Shin for Skirt Full of Black. The Member’s Choice award was presented to Ed Lin for This is a Bust.

After the ceremony, David Henry Hwang and BD Wong signed complimentary copies of M. Butterfly, published by Plume, that all attendees of the ceremony were lucky enough to receive.

“For the 11th Annual Asian American Literary Awards, The Workshop will present a Lifetime Achievement Award to playwright David Henry Hwang, who will reunite with B.D. Wong in a special reading and celebration for the 20th anniversary of their seminal contribution to Asian American culture, M. Butterfly.  Hwang and Wong will discuss their seminal contribution to Asian American culture with Oskar Eustis, the Artistic Director of The Public Theater. Every audience member will receive a free paperback of M. Butterfly.

BD Wong, Lia Chang and David Henry Hwang at the AALDEF Lunar New Year Gala at Pier 60 on February 21, 2008 in New York.

Tony Award-winning playwright David Henry Hwang will receive a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Asian American Writers’ Workshop at the Eleventh Annual Asian American Literary Awards Ceremony to celebrate the 20th anniversary of his groundbreaking play M. Butterfly on Monday, December 8, 2008 in New York. Mr. Hwang and Law & Order SVU actor BD Wong, who dazzled audiences in his Broadway debut in M. Butterfly and garnered the Outer Critic’s Circle Award, Theatre World Award, Drama Desk Award, Clarence Derwent Award, and the Tony Award for his star turn, will be reunited in a special reading and conversation with Oskar Eustis, the Artistic Director of The Public Theater.

Since 1998, The Asian American Writers’ Workshop has presented the Annual Asian American Literary Awards to some of the preeminent writers in the country, such as Amitav Ghosh, Ha Jin, Chang Rae-Lee, Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge, and Meera Nair.

This year, The Asian American Writers’ Workshop’s Asian American Literary Award honorees include Fiction award-winner Mohsin Hamid for The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Nonfiction award-winner Vijay Prashad for The Darker Nations, and Poetry Award-winner Sun Yung Shin for Skirt Full of Black.

All guests will receive a free paperback of M. Butterfly, published by Plume.

Monday, December 8, 2008

VIP Reception | 6-7:30 pm

Deutsches Haus at NYU

2 Washington Mews, New York

$100

Awards Ceremony | 7:30-9 pm

Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Film Center at NYU

36 East 8th Street, New York

$20 members, $30 non-members

Tickets may be purchased online at http://aaww.org/awards_2008.html.

Sponsored by The NYU Creative Writing Program, HSBC, Plume, Edelman, Verizon, Loeb & Loeb, Paradigm Talent Agency, Singha Beer, and The Chinatown Ice Cream Factory.

Asian-American dramatist David Henry Hwang is here in Manila to present his story of a 19th century Chinese family coping with living in a life being shaped by a deluge of influences from the West.

“This production is a coming-home of many sorts. It’s a coming home of David and the coming home of an experience. There will be actors from New York and they will collaborate with our local artists here,” CCP artistic director Chris Millado said during the press conference.

Directed by Obie awardee Loy Arcenas, the play will run for four weeks in two versions. It will be presented in English for the first two weeks. The Filipino version will be staged in the last two weeks of the schedule that will end on Sept. 7. Dennis Marasigan, artistic director of Tanghalang Pilipino and award-winning filmmaker, provided the translation.

Golden Child premiered at CCP’s Little Theater as the Tanghalang Pilipino’s 22nd theater season opening. It has a powerful ensemble including Irma Adlawan, Liesl Batucan, Tess Jamias, and Leo Rialp. They are joined by New York-based Tina Chilip and Art Acuña (an Obie winner for Magno Rubio), plus the Tanghalang Pilipino Actors’ Company.

“Golden Child is an oral history of my family and it is a major piece of writing I did as a kid. It is based on the story that my grandmother told me 40 years ago,” David told the press. “It’s really thrilling for me to do this production here because I have my roots here in the Philippines. I was 10 years old when my grandmother has fallen ill. So I asked my parents to let me spend my summer vacation here to visit my grandmother in Cebu. At the back of my mind, if she passed away, I wouldn’t be able to retrieve the story of my family,” the playwright added.

The Golden Child

“Golden Child is the title because the lead character refers to his daughter as his golden child or lucky charm in business or whenever he gambles,” David said.

The play is about a Chinese patriarch whose three wives worry about the effect of his apparent interest in Western ways on a household where ancestor worship is observed and traditional rituals are practiced, setting off a power struggle among them.

He decides to turn his back on Chinese customs and converts to Christianity, and his wives’ worries become more pronounced because in Christian tradition, a man has only one woman to call his wife.

His decision results in unexpected consequences he does not plan for nor remotely expects. It is his prized offspring, his golden child, who encourages him to go back to the Philippines and promises to tell great stories about how he made them all born again.

“My mother said that there are lots of events that didn’t happen in our family, but I am just narrating what my grandmother told me,” David laughed.

He added that the pleasant irony about his writing the Golden Child is that his maternal grandmother who has fallen ill didn’t pass away. His grandmother even saw the production in LA and liked it.

The golden playwright

Born and raised in Los Angeles, David Henry Hwang is a contemporary Asian-American playwright who has been acclaimed as one of the most prolific and most successful dramatists in the US.

He was critically acclaimed for his 1988 Tony Award-winning M. Butterfly, which ran for two years on Broadway. The production also won Drama Desk, John Gassner, and Outer Critics Circle Awards, and was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. The play enjoyed a one-year run on London ‘s West End and has been produced in over three dozen countries to date.

David’s Broadway musicals include his new book for Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Flower Drum Song, starring Lea Salonga, which earned him his third Tony nomination in 2003 for Best Book of a Musical. He co-wrote the book for Disney’s international hit Aida, with music and lyrics by Elton John and Tim Rice, which won four 2000 Tony Awards and ran over four years on Broadway, and was the book writer of Disney’s Tarzan, with songs by Phil Collins, which is currently a smash hit in Europe.

His play Golden Child premiered off-Broadway at the Joseph Papp Public Theater, received a 1997 Obie Award for playwriting and subsequently moved to Broadway, where it received three 1998 Tony nominations, including Best New Play. The Manila production of this play is produced by arrangement with Hal Leonard Australia Pty. Ltd., on behalf of Dramatists Play Service Inc., New York.

The regular ticket price is P600 and P300 pesos for students.

For more information, call 832-3661, 832-3704 or 891-9999.

–oOo–

Do Globo Online, pós Reuters em Paris:

O diretor canadense David Cronenberg foi picado pelo inseto da ópera. Literalmente. Já estão acontecendo os ensaios para a adaptação de “A mosca”, de 1987, para o teatro Chatelet, em Paris, e para a ópera de Los Angeles.

Os ensaios estão acontecendo no próprio teatro, que vai ter cinco apresentações de quarta-feira até 13 de julho.

A adaptação do filme no qual um cientista se transforma em um híbrido de homem e mosca gigante será conduzida pelo tenor Placido Domingo, com música composta por Howard Shore, que também escreveu as partituras para o filme original.

O roteiro é de David Henry Hwang, baseado na novela do francês George Langelaan.

Leia mais clicando aqui.

Chad Jones reports that Berkeley Rep is postponing David Henry Hwang’s Yellow Face, which was supposed to be the last play of the season. It looks like they plan to tour it in 2009, though, like they did with Passing Strange and Bridge & Tunnel, so it could end up being an extremely good thing for Hwang.

You’ve bookmarked Chad Jones’ Theater Dogs site, haven’t you? He knows all and sees everything, including Jersey Boys, which, if I’m reading his blog correctly, he’s seen one million and three times.

YELLOW FACE playwright David Henry Hwang at the Public Theater in New York on January 6, 2008. (Photo by Lia Chang)

Nothing is sacred in David Henry Hwang’s new comedy of mistaken racial identity YELLOW FACE, a stage mockumentary in theatrical form, examining race and ethnicity in America. The play opened at the Public Theater in December, and due to popular demand has been extended twice through January 13, 2008.

Seen through the lens of his alter-ego DHH (Hoon Lee), the story begins in the early 90’s, when David led the protest against the hiring of Jonathan Pryce in the original Broadway production of MISS SAIGON. The playwright pokes fun at himself as an Asian American role model, lays out the backstage politics of the theater world and weaves key touchstone scandals that affected the Asian American community in the 90’s, like the campaign finance scandals known as Donorgate, the persecution of Wen Ho Lee, the Chinese American nuclear scientist who was accused of treason, and his father being accused of laundering money for the Chinese, most all but forgotten by the mainstream media.

Having lived through the period and being familiar with many of the players, it was fascinating to decipher as David blurred the lines between fact and fiction.

Noah Bean, Francis Jue, Julienne Hanzelka Kim, Kathryn A. Layng, Hoon Lee, Lucas Caleb Rooney and Anthony Torn are a stellar ensemble, many of them playing multiple roles in this scathingly funny and smart satire.

David has a special affinity for The Public and considers it to be his artistic home. Exhilarated to be back with his first new play in ten years, YELLOW FACE is playing in Martinson Hall, the same theater where his first play, FOB was produced.

Current projects include writing the libretto for a new opera based on The Fly, David Cronenberg’s 1986 film, with Howard Shore as composer, David Cronenberg directing and Plácido Domingo conducting, set to open in June ‘08 at the Théâtre du Châtelet, and the L.A. Opera in Fall ‘08. His Bruce Lee/Monkey King inspired musical with martial arts, also in the works, is bound for Broadway in a few years.

On a break between rehearsal and an evening preview performance of YELLOW FACE, David discussed culture collisions, racism, ethnic and Asian American identity, and how music is a key aesthetic in all the mediums he creates for – theater, opera, film, television, and the musical theater.

What is YELLOW FACE about?

DHH: YELLOW FACE is kind of a stage mockumentary in some ways like This is Spinal Tap. It’s a theatrical version of that and a mockumentary, but it combines fictional incidents with actual incidents that took place to a character that’s named after me called DHH. He is an Asian American playwright, he wrote M. BUTTERFLY, was part of a protest against the casting of Jonathan Pryce as the Eurasian pimp in MISS SAIGON, and then subsequently DHH accidentally casts a white actor as the Asian in the broadway followup to M. BUTTERFLY called FACE VALUE, thinking that the white actor is part Asian. When he finds out that the actor is not, DHH tries to cover this up in order to preserve his reputation as an Asian American role model. That in turn kicks off a bunch of events.

What inspired you to write this play?

DHH: I’ve been thinking about something like this ever since the MISS SAIGON incident and feeling like the way that MISS SAIGON happened, it became kind of – the casting issue, and the issue of non-traditional casting, and how you deal with minorities in casting, and who should be able to play what, is actually kind of a complicated issue. During the MISS SAIGON incident, it devolved so quickly into kind of a media smackdown. It was all just about who’s going to win, it was like a sporting event. It didn’t last that long. For the two weeks or something it was pretty big, kind of culture wars incident.

It was sort of overwhelming to be in the middle of it, but also ever since then I’ve been trying to see if I could find some way to deal with some of these issues of what it means to play race in a more complicated fashion. So I tried with FACE VALUE in 1993 and that didn’t succeed, and not only didn’t it succeed commercially and critically, I really didn’t get to playwright. I needed more time to rewrite it. I think ever since then also I’ve been thinking about, how do you do a comedy of mistaken racial identity? FACE VALUE was more of a traditional farce with people hiding in closets and stuff.

Starting around 2000, Greg Pak put me in Asian Pride Porn ( an infomercial spoof in which David hocks progressive pornography featuring smart Asian women and sexually empowered Asian men. ). It was combination of that and thinking well gee, I could do that. Then I saw Doug Wright’s play, I AM MY OWN WIFE, and Doug put himself into a character in the play. The idea of doing a kind of mockumentary about myself seemed like maybe that was a way I could approach this comedy of mistaken racial identity.

What’s it like to write yourself into a play and see parts of your life happen on stage every night?

DHH: Well you know it’s not that different from what most writers do. Many writers write autobiographical plays. The main difference is that this character is actually named after me and the plot actually intersects with certain events that were covered by the news media, whether it was the MISS SAIGON thing or my father being accused of laundering money for the Chinese. So in a sense, if I wanted to get into stuff like those two incidents, I kind of had to use my real name, or I guess I could have made up an Asian American playwright called Donald Chan or something, but what would be the point in that? And then I found that once I decided I was going to call him David Henry Hwang, in a funny way, it was easier for me to make him a character and to depart from, make him different from me in some ways. I kind of compare it to – a lot of actors talk about it when they have to do a nude scene. At first, the idea is sort of intimidating, but once they actually get out on stage or take off their clothes, they find it very liberating. I found once I named the character DHH, I found it very liberating.

How did you choose Hoon to play you?

DHH: I always kind of had Hoon in mind as I was starting to write this. You know we don’t look alike, but this play wasn’t going to be about that anyway. It wasn’t going to be about trying to do that sort of imitation. I think that because I’d gotten to know Hoon, of course, he was in FLOWER DRUM SONG. And I’d also gotten to know him through the Lark, a play development center in midtown where I do some of my work, develop some of my work. Hoon is also in the acting company-the pool of actors. And I just though, he has the comic chops to be able to do this. And the DHH character was going to be, as I was writing it, kind of ridiculous in a lot of ways. Hoon has the ability to kind of project that and also maintain a kind of fragile dignity.

And casting Kathryn?

DHH: Well Kathryn, when I finished the play, there was a track as it were, the actors in this play, play many different parts, most of them did. So there was one role for a female who plays maybe 30 different parts. I though this would be good for Kathryn. Suffice to say that because my wife is not Asian, and I often write about Asian subjects, it doesn’t come up that often that there’s a part she could do. And then also at this point, we have two kids and our youngest started first grade, so I knew she’d been wanting to get back into it. We’d worked together twice. We met on M. BUTTERFLY. She was in M. BUTTERFLY, and then we did a one-act together in Louisville-the Louisville Humana Festival in ‘92 was a 2 hander, that Oskar Eustis, who is now the head of the Public Theater directed. So we all kind of knew each other.

So at one point, I asked her if she wanted to do it. And she wanted to do it.

Working together has actually been sort of great because we’ve been married, it’ll be 13 years in a couple of weeks when we have our anniversary. We’ve been going together for like 18 years, so it’s nice for her to actually see me in a context where I’m actually good at something. As opposed to at home, where you’re like the husband, the dad, you’re always screwing up. So I think its actually been good for the relationship.

How did you choose Francis?

DHH: We’ve known each other since he was in the original Broadway production of BUTTERFLY, and starred in two of the national tours. He read the part of HYH (based on David’s father) in one of the early readings, and I thought he was fantastic, though my initial impression was that he was too young for the part. He then generously agreed to do the Stanford workshop, despite the fact that we’d already cast Tzi Ma to do the role in LA. When Tzi couldn’t commit to follow the show to NY, we were thrilled to go back to Francis, particularly because we had learned that, given the mockdocumentary style of the piece, my earlier concerns about his age were no longer relevant. He has been a treasure to this production, not only in the role of HYH, but also in his chameleon-like ability to brilliantly capture the numerous other characters he’s asked to portray.

Have many Asian American audiences seen it yet?

DHH: We did a whole six week run in Los Angeles this Spring at the Mark Taper Forum at the Music Center there. At that point a number of West coast Asians saw the show. It s always a little hard for me to get a gauge generally out of people. If they don’t like the show, they’re not going to tell me personally. But certainly the Asians that spoke to me really enjoyed the show.

I think there is some value in recapping a lot of those touchstone events that were very eviseral for us as Asians in particular in the 90’s and the latter half of the 90’s-being the campaign finance scandals known as Donorgate at the time, the persecution of Wen Ho Lee- the Chinese American nuclear scientist who was accused of treason, and then also in this play, something that’s not as well known but fits into that period was my father being accused of laundering money. I felt like they had a big impact on Asian Americans and they’ve kind of been forgotten by the mainstream media.

It’s sort of like- I don’t know how many non Asian audience members when after seeing the play, really remember all that happening. I think people probably remember Wen Ho Lee. Whether or not people remember the campaign finance scandals, I don’t know. And I think it useful to go back now where the status of Asian Americans in this country is not as charged. It’s a calmer time, which by the way, I think may very well heat up again. I believe, will heat up again as the century continues. At the moment it’s relatively calm. And to look at those things, go over them with some kind of distance and see how kind of insidious they were at the time. It’s easy to forget.

Can you talk about having a white guy in the play pretending he is Asian?

DHH: By having Marcus, the white guy who is pretending to be Asian, or involved in this sort of ruse, become a kind of zelig like figure in a lot of these scandals in the late 90’s, I guess I was trying to do a few things. First of all it seemed to me that if you’re going to talk about yellow face, as in a white person playing an Asian person, in order for a white person to really know what it means to be an Asian, he or she has to experience the negative side as well. And that’s what I always find so kind of glib about notions of yellow face-that there’s something kind of fun or amusing or exotic that a white person could experience playing an Asian. But the whole experience includes both the things that are great about being Asian, and the things that are challenging and difficult about being Asian.

So I wanted Marcus to see both sides of that experience. I think it problematizes by having a white guy go through those experiences, it problematizes how we, both how Asians perceive those events and how mainstream audiences perceive those events because I wanted to get at this notion that when something like this does happen, that is when Chinese Americans or any minority group fall under suspicion and become racially profiled, it can happen to anybody. It can happen to the David Henry Hwang character, the Tony award winning playwright gets pulled into it. And it can happen to a guy name Marcus Gee who’s actually a white guy, just because he’s taken a Chinese sounding stage name.

For Asians I think it’s somewhat problematic because it is questionable – how do you feel about this white guy pretending to be Asian, who’s an imposter and who really gets into the experience enough to become an advocate? Does his advocacy in any way mitigate his lie or is his lie the most important thing about him? It’s not like I believe one should be more important than the other, I just think it’s an interesting question to ask.

What did the L.A. audiences ask?

DHH: In L.A. people wanted to ask what’s true and what’s not true. Which is the question that I’m going to duck because part of the method of the play is that you don’t know. And then after that people are curious about- mainstream audiences are curious about how much of the background of the incidents whether its Donorgate or Wen Ho Lee, how much of that is true? Which I will talk about. They vaguely remember it but they can’t quite put their fingers on it. I think all audiences, Asian Americans included, it causes people to think about WHAT IS RACE? And What are these racial categories? And how firm are they? Which is a pretty good area. Something I wanted people to think about.

How do you define race in the context of yellow face?

DHH: In some ways yellow face could probably fall – if we were going to get academic about it, into Post Race Theory. It’s about some of the ways Race is a social construct and that can fall away. For instance the DHH character, he is heavily invested in his identity as a prominent Asian American figure, and as we go through the 2nd act of the play increasingly, that’s all he has, and he’s not doing anything substantial for Asian Americans. He’s just holding onto the shell or the mask of being an Asian American role model.

Sometimes people have asked me in this run in New York-you’re married and you have kids, why did you make the character single? And I think it’s because he is a character and I wanted to create a character-that’s all he had, just his identity as an Asian American. I think those things hopefully make us question that what it means to get stuck in an ethnic identity.

People who are my age, and I’m 50, claiming our identity as Asian American was a really important part of finding out who we are, and at the same time, I think as the decades have gone by and also the way younger generations perceive their Asian American identity, in the 70’s and 80’s, it was like –Oh this Asian American thing was so new, wow, now that I know I’m Asian American, I know who I am. And increasingly you start to learn, no, that doesn’t answer the whole question of identity. It’s an important part but it’s not the whole thing.

The Dong speeches in the play, which are monologues about a minority, a community that live in China, and the fact that their music which is very much associated with their identity, is actually fairly polyglot, it come from the Silk Road, you can hear Eastern European influences in the music, Middle Eastern influences, and so whatever we think of as authentic was once inauthentic, was once something new, was the result of some kind of culture collision.

So culture is constantly changing. And as culture constantly changes, notions of race constantly change, notions of identity constantly change. Everything is an evolution. I wanted to get into that as sort of a, maybe under a Post Race Theory kind of category. At the same time, you have to keep in mind that racism still does exist and that’s part of the function of the Wen Ho Lee sequence, and the sequence with my father. So how do you hold both those things in your head? I felt like that’s the kind of historical moment we’re in that I’m trying to grapple with in this play.

What do you hope audiences will come away with?

DHH: I hope audiences will feel that it’s safe and okay to question their assumptions whatever those assumptions may be. At this point, I feel like when the subject of race comes up, we all sort of know what our positions are and we go to our respective corners. I don’t feel like we’re that open to having a dialogue about it anymore.

One of the things I learned in L.A., we’ll see if it holds true here, in a funny way I came to feel that by making fun of myself, the DHH character screws up, the DHH character makes wrong assumptions about race, he says things that are stereotypical, I think it allows the audience to, as they’re laughing at that, to kind of open up a little and realize it’s okay to make mistakes. I think we’re really afraid to make mistakes, where it comes to questions of race and ethnicity and cultural interaction nowadays. And unfortunately the only thing we can do is continue to have a dialogue to move forward to change things. It is necessarily going to involve making some mistakes.

How has music played an important part in your life and what do you have coming up?

DHH: My mother is a pianist. My sister is a cellist. I grew up playing violin. When I went to college, I learned how to improvise and I became a jazz violinist and I did that for a number of years, was in a band with Philip Gotanda.

While I haven’t ended up pursuing music as a career, music has ended up being a big part of my aesthetic as a playwright. I feel like I’ve always used, going back to FOB, which by the way is in the same theater as YELLOW FACE, music and movement was always a big part of what I do. There’s not much movement in this show in terms of dance, and then at a certain point, I started getting into actual musicals, the two Disney musicals AIDA and TARZAN, and the remake of FLOWER DRUM SONG.

And then I started getting into writing libretti for operas. So I’ve done five or six operas now, and the next one coming up will be an opera of David Cronenberg’s movie, THE FLY. Which is such a crazy idea. I really loved it when the notion came up. I’m writing it with the composer Howard Shore’s probably best known as a film composer for the LORD OF THE RINGS movies and he’s won a couple of Oscars for that.

So I’ve now adapted his work, it’s an interesting reversal since he did the movie version of M. BUTTERFLY. So he adapted my work and I’m adapting his work. And Howard Shore, the composer has also done the scores for most the Cronenberg movies, including,THE FLY and M. BUTTERFLY. We all kind of have worked together in different ways. We’re opening that in Paris in June at the Chatelet and then it goes to the L.A. Opera in the Fall 2008.

I also have a musical project I’ve been working on for a while. A Broadway musical which kind of involves martial arts movement, sort of a Bruce Lee musical and sort of a Monkey King musical. It attempts to kind of conflate the two stories. That’s something I’ve been waiting to do for a while, but I couldn’t really figure out how do you have martial arts movement in any way that’s kind of interesting and theatrical. I didn’t want to put people on wires. And then I saw the work of this Shanghainese choreographer, Huang Dou Dou. Dou Dou runs a company in Shanghai and he has essentially created a dance form that combines some martial arts tropes and Chinese opera tropes with modern Martha Graham type dance. I loved his work a lot. I began to see a way to incorporate the movement into the Broadway show that would be interesting. We’ve just put the creative team together. We’re just starting to write it. Hope to get it on Broadway in 2-3 years.

How does it feel to be back at the Public?

DHH: I love being back at the Public. In 1980, we did FOB in the Martinson, and now it’s 2007, we’re doing YELLOW FACE at the Martinson. I was 22 and I was definitely the youngest person in the room. And now I’m 50 and I’m the oldest person in the room. To be able to have that kind of continuity with an institution-I’ve only really worked in New York at the Public and or Broadway. Not Lincoln Center Theater, Playwrights Horizon, Manhattan Theater Club or any of those places. Well, this has always been kind of my artistic home. It’s great now under three artistic leaders-Joe Papp, then George Wolf, and now Oskar Eustis, that I’ve been able to maintain that continuity.

Of all the mediums you’ve worked in, is there one that speaks to you most?

DHH: I started as a playwright and I haven’t done a play in ten years. GOLDEN CHILD was my last straight play prior to YELLOW FACE. I’ve been doing all of these other things which are great and I really really love doing them. Coming back to a play, it’s the medium where the writer, ie: me, is really in charge. It’s really my vision that everyone is trying to support.

If I do an opera, I feel like one of my jobs is to create something that the composer is going to do his or her best work for, we’re supporting the composer’s vision. If I do a movie, we’re supporting the director’s vision. If it’s a musical, it’s a more complicated animal. Certainly, if it’s a Disney musical, it’s supporting Disney’s vision. So I enjoy doing all those. It’s wonderful to come in, and bring as much of yourself as you can to someone else’s project, and feel I have some craft that I can contribute. But in any play, it’s me that’s out there. It’s the writer that’s out there. But coming back and doing a play again, its more exhilarating in a lot of ways, and a lot scarier in a lot of ways ’cause it is really me that’s out there. In this case, it’s me because there’s a character called DHH.

If there was anything you could say to your father today, what would that be?

DHH: I guess I would say to my Dad, “Look! You always wanted me to write a play about you, and now I’ve finally done it!”

For David it was time to get back to work. At fifteen minutes to curtain, our chat drew to a close as he headed back into Martinson Hall to see how the changes he made to the script in rehearsal earlier today would play out in front of an audience.

YELLOW FACE has performances through Sunday, January 13th in Martinson Hall at the Public Theater. The performance schedule is Tuesdays at 7 PM; Wednesdays thru Fridays at 8 PM; Saturdays at 2 PM and 8 PM; and Sundays at 3 PM and 7 PM.

The Public Theater is located at 425 Lafayette Street. Tickets are $50 with student tickets available in advance, at the box office only, for $25 (1 per ID). There are a limited number of Rush Tickets sold an hour before curtain at every performance available to the general public (Two per person, $20 each, cash only).

To purchase tickets, call (212) 967-7555 or visit www.publictheater.org.
Flower Drum Song: An American Story

Francis Jue in the lobby of the Public Theater on January 4, 2008.

Francis Jue as HYH and Hoon Lee as DHH in David Henry Hwang's YELLOW FACE at the Public Theater in New York. (Photo by Joan Marcus)

Francis Jue distinguishes himself as Hwang’s father, Henry Y. Hwang, who founded Far East National Bank, the first Asian American-owned federally chartered bank in the continental United States. Jue’s moving and heartfelt portrayal of HYH — a successful, charismatic Chinese American banker who sees himself as equal parts Jimmy Stewart, Clark Gable, Gary Cooper and Frank Sinatra in pursuit of the American Dream Hollywood style, but after he is accused of laundering money for the Chinese, subsequently loses faith in the American system – has been earning the consummate actor rave reviews.

Francis Jue as Song Liling in M. BUTTERFLY. (Photo by David Allen)

The San Francisco native made his New York stage debut in Steven Sondheim and John Weidman’s PACIFIC OVERTURES in 1984, appeared on Broadway in Hwang’s M. BUTTERFLY in 1988 and originated the role of Bun Foo in THROUGHLY MODERN MILLIE(2002). No stranger to accolades, he received San Francisco Bay Area Critics Circle Awards for his star turns in the TheatreWorks productions of CABARET and RED; for his acting and choreography on INTO THE WOODS and PACIFIC OVERTURES, and a DramaLogue Award playing Molina in KISS OF THE SPIDERWOMAN. Equally at

Francis Jue as Song Liling in M. BUTTERFLY. (Photo by David Allen)

 home in a play or a musical, he’s played the title roles in AMADEUS and the THE KING AND I opposite Debby Boone, and has worked at the Public Theater in THE TRAGEDY OF RICHARD II, Chay Yew’s A LANGUAGE OF THEIR OWN, KING LEAR, TIMON OF ATHENS, PERICLES, HAMLET AND THE WINTER’S TALE. Television audiences may be familiar with him as Dr. Fong on Law & Order: SVU and Dr. Yamagachi on One Life to Live.

Francis Jue starred in the title role of the Muny’s PETER PAN in 2007. Photo by Larry Pry/The Muny

“Francis is a brilliant actor of immense integrity and sensitivity. From the Emcee to Mozart, from Song Liling to the King of Siam, his work has a range that is truly astonishing. He’s a wonderfully open-hearted collaborator as well, a great man of the theatre,” enthused TheatreWorks artistic director Robert Kelley.

It’s been a wild year for the actor who has had the opportunity to stretch in diverse roles. At ACT in San Francisco, he played Mr. Oji, a Japanese American accountant in Philip Kan Gotanda’s new play AFTER THE WAR and for his role, he was named part of a “Favorite Couple” for his performance along with Delia MacDougall as Olga Mikhoels in Chad Jone’s most distinctive theater moments of 2007 list on insidebayarea.com.

In New York at the Vineyard Theater, Francis played Dr. Mendel, a Jewish American psychiatrist in the all Asian American NAATCO production of William Finn’s FALSETTOLAND during the Asian American Theater Festival. He soared as Peter Pan at the Muny in St. Louis, and then returned to the New York Fringe Festival to play a Chinese American father in Kevin So’s very contemporary musical VICTOR WOO: THE AVERAGE ASIAN AMERICAN.

YELLOW FACE is his most challenging project to date. Each night he puts his special stamp on playing HYH, BD Wong, Bernie Jacobs, New York Post, Joe Papp, Pravda, actor Rodney Hatamiya, a militant student, Boston Globe, Michael Riedel, a patron at a porn shop, a dancer in the KING AND I, a reporter, Margaret Cho, a protester at an Asian American rally and Wen Ho Lee.

On casting Francis, Hwang related, “We’ve known each other since he was in the original Broadway production of BUTTERFLY, and starred in two of the national tours. He read the part of HYH in one of the early readings, and I thought he was fantastic, though my initial impression was that he was too young for the part. He then generously agreed to do the Stanford workshop, despite the fact that we’d already cast Tzi Ma to do the role in LA. When Tzi couldn’t commit to follow the show to NY, we were thrilled to go back to Francis, particularly because we had learned that, given the mockdocumentary style of the piece, my earlier concerns about his age were no longer relevant. He has been a treasure to this production, not only in the role of HYH, but also in his chameleon-like ability to brilliantly capture the numerous other characters he’s asked to portray.”

Over noodles before an evening performance of YELLOW FACE, Francis talked about family, his life in the theater and his favorite roles.

Where did you grow up?

Francis: I grew up in San Francisco. I loved it. I had a really great childhood. I feel like I grew up in a way that was really good for me because I was a very shy kid and was sort of terrorized by the idea of actually having to talk to people. I was a very timid child but I loved to perform. There were aspects of all different kinds of performance that I took very seriously from the very beginning, including church. My earliest memory of what I wanted to be was Elvis Presley. I thought I’d love to be that free and confident. That changed to other kinds of heroes in the movies. It’s one of the reasons why I love Henry so much, because something as silly as idolizing movie stars and pop culture, American culture the way that he does, I really relate to. I went to a high school, St. Ignatius Prep., that had a really great drama program, and learned in an environment that wasn’t just about show business. It was about theater as a spiritual exercise.

Did you do plays in high school?

Francis: I was in the chorus of musicals because I was too afraid to speak. I couldn’t audition with a script. When I was little, I loved to sing and dance. So I auditioned for the chorus of musicals. My very first show in high school was MY FAIR LADY. I was in the ensemble. I played an orphan in OLIVER. I did a theater revue of different music from shows called MUSICAL THEATER WORKS that our high school drama teacher put together. The program in high school was really about discipline, about approaching the work not just as a craft, but as a social and spiritual exercise. The vast majority of what I learned about how to approach acting, I learned in high school. I think that I’ve had to approach most of the work that I’ve done from the point of view of finding what I have in common with what I think the show is saying, and fulfilling my role in delivering that story, that message. It’s all about meaning. Like religion is all about meaning, it’s about interpretation, it’s about understanding the world, or understanding ourselves, or finding the framework just to cope with the world. That’s how I’ve approached performing ever since high school.

What neighborhood did you grow up in?

Francis: I grew up in the Richmond district. It was a very Irish Catholic neighborhood when I was growing up. There weren’t that many Asian American families there at that time, so a lot of my friends were Irish American. I was very aware of being different. Half the time at home we were eating Chinese food. I knew they weren’t doing that at other homes. I was both very alienated from the neighborhood I was growing up in and in a weird way sheltered within that neighborhood.

Where are you in the lineup of your siblings?

Francis: I have eight brother and sisters. I’m number six. Chinese and Catholic. It was a fertile combination, at least for my parents Frank and Jennie Jue.

What did your parents do?

Francis: My father was an engineer for the Navy for many years. And my mother was a great stay-at-home mom until enough of us were at school, so she could start working at a bank.

Why did you choose to go to Yale?

Francis: It had a great English Lit program. It was not UC Berkeley where most of my other brothers and sisters were. It was away from home. I wanted to strike out on my own. It also had a great theater program. I wanted to continue doing theater on the sly. I knew that I couldn’t major in it because my parents said that I would be disowned if I did. But I thought I could still do it on the side and I could figure out what to do with an English Degree later.

Had you been to the East Coast before?

Francis: I visited during Spring break to check out the schools, using a lot of my saved up money. I and three friends came to the East Coast to check out schools, see shows in New York and basically fool around. Everyone that I met from Yale was weird and quirky and odd, and there was something about that I thought I could fit into.

How did you get your start in the performing arts, professionally?

Francis: One of the people I met, while I was at Yale, graduated and was the audition pianist for the revival of PACIFIC OVERTURES that happened in 1984. They were having trouble finding the Boy in the Tree. He looked me up, back at Yale, and asked me if I would take the train in from Yale to audition. I did and I got that part and the Dutch admiral and one of the British sailors. Suddenly, I was in a show in New York with stuff of mine own to do and say.

I almost didn’t do it because I was in the senior thesis of someone else at Yale. She has gone on to become a big director and writer herself. But at the time, she was about to graduate from Yale, and had written this piece that I was in the chorus of. We had only just started rehearsals. I went to her and told her I was going to quit because I had this great opportunity doing a show in New York. She tried to convince me not to take the job in New York and do her show. I remember her saying that I wasn’t ready. That she didn’t want me to embarrass myself. That if I stayed with her show, she would give me a line that I could sing by myself and be the dance captain. And I was inclined to believe her. I called another friend of mine who has gone on to become a great composer on Broadway and he said, “Are you crazy? Call New York and tell them yes, and I’ll tell you how to talk to so and so about turning down her show.”

I wound up commuting between school and New York to do PACIFIC OVERTURES surrounded by a group of Asian American artists who couldn’t have been more loving and talented, and couldn’t have been more generous with this upstart kid who knew nothing about what he was doing, just throwing it all out there. I learned a lot from them.

Who was in the cast?

Francis: Ernie Abuba, Tom Ikeda, Tom Matsusaka, Tim Ewing, John Baray, John Bantay, Timm Fujii and so many others. It was a lovely, lovely company. And eventually it got picked up by the Shuberts and Liz McCann and it got transferred to The Promenade. We ran for a few months and then I went back for my senior year of college after that. I thought I’d never become a professional actor.

After college, I got a job at the San Francisco Aids Foundation and was thinking about getting an MPA or an MPH and work in the nonprofit sector and use my English Lit Degree to help write grants and educational materials, health education that kind of stuff. Meg Simon gave me a call to audition for her, because they were looking for a new understudy for M. BUTTERFLY. She came to San Francisco, I read for her, she gave me some notes and I didn’t hear from her for six months.

Six months later she said, “B.D. has decided he is going to be leaving the show, he’s told us when, can you come in for a callback?” Who’s paying? I’m just a secretary in a nonprofit. So she got the producer to pay, fly me out to New York, put me up in a hotel, give me a ticket to see the show the night before my audition, so I knew they were serious about me. I went to the audition, auditioning on the stage of the Eugene O’Neill and just praying, conjuring up every actor that every worked on that stage to give me the strength. I remember reading and really focusing on all the notes that Meg had given me from my first audition in SF, and at the end of my read, she told me that she really appreciated that I had worked on those things. I thought it was really sweet. I’ll never forget when the producer asked me whether I could do the Beijing opera. And honestly having seen it, I didn’t think I could. Before I could say anything, David spoke up for me. And he said, “Of course Stuart, look at all his dance credits on his resume. Of course he can do it.” To this day, I’m grateful for David for sticking up for me, for really speaking out for a lot of us over the long haul. So that’s when I gave up my day job. Ever since then I’ve tried to do it as long as it would have me.

And it’s been having you a very long time. Let’s talk about the variety of different roles you’ve had in just the last twelve months.

Francis: Last year I started the year at ACT in San Francisco, doing a new play by Philip Kan Gotanda called AFTER THE WAR, playing a Japanese American accountant who had been released from the internment camps and repatriated back in San Francisco. Then I played Doctor Mendel in FALSETTOLAND, here in town, a showcase in the Asian American Theater Festival. Then I played Peter Pan at the Muny in St. Louis, and then I played a Chinese American father in VICTOR WOO: THE AVERAGE ASIAN AMERICAN at the Fringe Festival, and now this, YELLOW FACE. It’s been a wild year of all sorts of different kinds of roles, I’ve had to really stretch this year. I’ve been really lucky. I’ve been really lucky all my career.

And coming back to the Public, doing this show at the Public. The Public took a chance on me years ago. I’d never even auditioned for a Shakespeare play, and suddenly I had an audition for (THE TRAGEDY OF) RICHARD II at the Public. Jordan Thaler brought me in early one morning. My agents had called me the day before and said, “You have to have two contrasting monologues.” I didn’t have two contrasting monologues. So I stayed up all night reading all sorts of plays. And I picked Edmund from LEAR and Benedick from MUCH ADO. I didn’t get a wink of sleep that night. I memorized both of them by the next morning and I did them for Jordan. He asked me to try them each a different way. I was really open to that because I hadn’t had time to settle into one way of doing either of these monologues. And suddenly I’m in a Shakespeare play directed by Steven Berkoff.

Who do you play in YELLOW FACE?

Francis: I play BD Wong, Bernie Jacobs, New York Post, Joe Papp, Pravda, Henry Hwang, Rodney Hatamiya, a militant student, Boston Globe, Michael Riedel, a patron at a porn shop, a dancer in the KING AND I, a reporter, Margaret Cho, a protester at an Asian American rally, Wen Ho Lee.

This show is so incredibly challenging and yet every single night before the show, I can’t wait to get out there. I just feel like it’s tapping into so many different ways of challenging me that I really look forward to it every night. There is so much of this show that I relate to, that at its heart I think part of the struggle in the show is the need to be an individual, the desire to distinguish yourself from everyone else, and at the same time to be a part of something, a community, of a movement, of a family. Every single one of the characters in this play has this struggle going on where they want somehow to distinguish themselves-want to be an adult, want to be a star, want to be a role model. And at the same time they want to be a part of something larger than themselves. That struggle in each one of these characters is both entertaining when they collide with one another, those two impulses, but also incredibly moving. It’s something that I struggled with for a very long time.

Of all the roles that you’ve done, do you have any particular favorites?

Francis: This one in YELLOW FACE, not just playing Henry, but the whole track is one of my favorites.

Francis Jue as The King of Siam and Debby Boone as Anna in AMTSJ's THE KING AND I, 2006. (Photo by David M. Allen)

I think that roles like the King in the KING AND I, just give back so much. I could get really spoiled with as much as the King gives back.

Playing Song Liling in M. BUTTERFLY is another highlight because it is so hard and at the same time so easy to slip into if you let it.

I played Peter Pan 20 years ago, and then playing him again, I feel like I had a better idea how to do it, as old as I am, as rickety as I am. There was something about playing Peter Pan as someone who has had the opportunity to grow up. And to learn about sad things in the world. And to learn about separation, but just denying it, as opposed to someone who has never dealt with it at all. That was really compelling coming back to the show again.

Francis Jue, as the Kit Kat Club emcee in the 1996 TheatreWorks production of CABARET. (Photo by David Allen)

The Emcee in CABARET is also a favorite of mine. I love how seductive that show is. As ugly as it all is, it lures you in and it makes you feel comfortable, and then it twists the knife. Playing that character really helped me learn about what it’s like to lose your inhibitions. Not to measure out every aspect of your performance, but to trust that you know who you are, trust that you are enough, and not because I think that everyone is right for every character, but that if you truly understand how the potential of that character’s capacity for good or evil is exactly your capacity, that you have just as much potential of doing everything this character does and feels and thinks, there’s a certain amount of freedom.

What was your process for creating the character of Henry?

Francis: I purposely didn’t ask David very much about his real dad because the responsibility of playing the father of someone I admire so much, the idea of trying to imitate somebody who is real was not productive for me, it was very inhibiting. So I decided to approach him as a character, I read and reread the script for clues, being an English Lit major really helps in those terms because it helps me take little details about how something is written and turn them into a rationale for the character’s history, the character’s past, the character’s way of expressing himself, for censoring himself, little clues as to how a character feels about himself.

And then I was encouraged a lot during rehearsals to really explore the alpha male aspects of this part, and those aren’t qualities or an orientation that come naturally to me. So I really had to come up with models for alpha males that were appropriate for Henry. There were men and women in my family that I drew on for that. People who had the same experience as Henry’s, of having articulated for themselves the American dream and actually achieved it, as opposed to somebody who sees those dreams as a goal to be achieved far off in the distance. People who actually worked their asses off and did it. I was never prouder than when David’s mother came to see the show. After she saw the show for the first time, she gave me a big hug, and she said that I had a lot of soul as an actor, and that that soul really captured what Henry was all about. That made me very proud.

Can you describe Henry?

Francis: He’s a self made man, he’s a bottom-line guy, he dreams big and doesn’t concern himself with the details. He shoots from the hip. He’s a quintessential manager, he sees the world in black and white. When he walks into a room, there’s barely enough oxygen for anyone else because he is the life of the party. He loves his family deeply and because of how much he loves them, is tough on them, because he expects so much of them. Ultimately in the end I think of him as a child in many ways, both because he’s impulsive, but also because he’s innocent. I don’t think naïve, I think innocent because he has chosen to have faith.

Did David give you any clues?

Francis: Very early on, one of the first things David asked me was if I would stand up straight. I had been focused on the age of this character. So I was a little hunched over, a little bent. When he asked me to stand up straight, it was a huge clue to this man. I didn’t just stand up straight, I attempted to characterize a man, who even as he was getting older willed himself to be taller than he was because he was that ambitious, and that proud. David once said that he loved watching through the course of rehearsals how I was releasing my inner alpha male. It’s not how I present myself in real life at all. It’s been fun indulging in that side of myself. David’s been very kind to me about playing his dad. I’ve really tried to focus not on the outward aspects of this man, but the life that he lived. What better way to convince people that I’m DHH’s father than to focus on what the relationship is like and has been, and then the rest of it will take care of itself.

David has said that he realized pretty late in the process that he was writing a tribute to his father. I interpret that to mean not just his father’s dreams and ambitions and what he achieved, but the fact that this wasn’t just a character in a play, an image or a role model, that he was just a man. In spite of, or maybe because of everything, he had figured some things out. That gave him reason to hope throughout his life. I’m not sure that you can do any better than that. I think that’s a really cool thing.

When you grow up a lot of times you think, metaphorically you have to kill your parents, you have to see the world as something other than what your parents believed the world was. I’m finding that once you’ve experienced some of that world yourself, you start realizing what your parents did have going on, and you come back to what it was your parents may have dreamed as young people and what they accomplished in you as much as anything else, and realize that they really figured some things out. That’s why I’m having such a great time with the show.

Performances for YELLOW FACE run through Sunday, January 13th in Martinson Hall at the Public Theater. The performance schedule is Tuesdays at 7 PM; Wednesdays thru Fridays at 8 PM; Saturdays at 2 PM and 8 PM; and Sundays at 3 PM and 7 PM.

The Public Theater is located at 425 Lafayette Street. Tickets are $50 with student tickets available in advance, at the box office only, for $25 (1 per ID). There are a limited number of Rush Tickets sold an hour before curtain at every performance available to the general public (Two per person, $20 each, cash only).

To purchase tickets, call (212) 967-7555 or visit www.publictheater.org.

In the afterward to his play, M. Butterfly, David Henry Hwang explains, “For the myths of the East, the myths of the West, the myths of men, and the myths of women–these have so saturated our consciousness that truthful contact between nations and lovers can only be the result of heroic effort.  Those who prefer to bypass the work involved will remain in a world of surfaces, misperceptions running rampant.”  He explains that such misperception led to Rene Gallimard learning nothing of his lover for over twenty years, not even that his “butterfly” was in fact a man and not a woman.

Twenty years after Hwang made these observations, I find myself frustrated for it appears that as a country we still prefer to bypass the work necessary to move beyond surfaces and misconceptions.   This is what I attempted to address in my earlier post today concerning Senator Hillary Clinton. 

In 1988 Hwang argued that various elements of our culture (catalogues, tv ads, etc.) tended to reject women (he was speaking of Asian women) for what they have become– independent, assertive, self-possessed–in favor of a more reactionary model-the pre-feminist, domesticated geisha girl.”  For the modern eqivalent of the geisha you might want to take a look at some current rap videos whose messages tend to be that women are objects to be possessed and used. 

 Our culuture tends to send mixed messages.  We value equality and the puritan work ethic and believe that anyone, regardleess of race, ethnicity, or gender, can succeed in America if they work hard.  But when they achieve the success of someone like Senator Hillary Clinton , they are often reduced to what they wear instead of what they have accomplished. Many in our culture even ask if Barack Obama is “Black” enough.  Isn’t it time we moved beyond surfaces and stereotype? 

See Clinton & Obama address these issues:

Apparently we haven’t moved beyond surface and stereotype.  It appears many Americans have fallen in love with the fantasy of ourselves as “heroes” and “liberators”.  According to a recent Newsweek poll, 41 percent of Americans still believe Saddam Hussein’s regime was somehow involved in the terrorist attack of 9/11, even though there appears to be no evidence to support such a connection. 

Why is that?  Media creates artifice.  Our citizens receive their information in 30 second sound bites and no one thinks and no one questions.

Hwang’s work, however, did search for answers regarding such cultural artifice.  Through a deconstruction of Puccini’s Madame Butterfly, Hwang’s work is one that questions notions of race, sex, and imperialism and leaves this reader searching wondering why, twenty years later, like Rene Gallimard, our country still finds itself in love with stereotype.

So… we’re the first to admit this is a highly nonacademic, inevitably biased, and minorly inappropriate study. But let us academize it and tell you why it’s important to talk about.

For many decades, Asian Americans have been a minority group in the United States, dealing with irritating and offensive stereotypes, being lumped as the “model minority” or “the other,” etc., etc. Asian American women have had the strange burden of being exotified, over-sexualized, and rendered submissive, while Asian American men have been stereotyped as nerdy, studious, asexual, and unable to throw a football (let alone get a girl). This has made people such as Frank Chin and David Henry Hwang — and angry asian man — very angry.

As Asian Americans living in Los Angeles, California (with a decent-sized Asian/Asian American population), we hear many of the activists obsess over Asian American male demasculinization — and for good reason. But you get tired of some of the reactions. You get tired of people who watch Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift and think that seeing an Asian American man with a multitude of hot white/black/Latina lovers onscreen is some sort of empowering statement for Asian male sexuality. These images serve a purpose for a certain context, but they often come across as insecure, desperate attempts to overcompensate for an Asian/Asian American male hotness that supposedly isn’t really there in the first place.

The reason this drives us crazy is because it is there. Hot Asian men abound in so many different forms that it’s too hard to count or categorize. And in every case their hotness comes before the politics of their race. This is abundantly clear on the other side of the planet (4/7th of the Earth’s population and growing), where Asian men have long been considered hot, and no one has identity issues over it.

It can be argued that mainstream America needs to be more open-minded about its standards of beauty, so they can fully appreciate the Asian faces we’ve got. Sure, Daniel Dae Kim, Kal Penn, and John Cho are attractive in certain ways, but let’s not pretend they’re the best examples of hot Asian men we have (just ’cause they’re the only ones in Hollywood we can think of). When analyzing diversity in the media and thinking about Hollywood as a business, it’s important to understand that Asian male actors will make you money in Hollywood if they are hot enough by mainstream standards. Let’s not put all our pressure on our existing Asian American actors to compete with the Pitts and McConaugheys, when we can easily find others who can.

We’re talking about blasting through glass ceilings here, not lowering them. Take Denzel Washington. Unarguably talented, Oscar-winning actor. But let’s not pretend his hotness wasn’t a deciding factor (see Mississippi Masala) when he was first breaking into an industry with an embarrassing dearth of African American actors.

Nobody had to explain that Denzel is hot “for an African American.” Everyone just got it. There are hot Asian equivalents around, though we might have to look across the Pacific to find some of them. With the entertainment industry going global, this is a realistic possibility. Some of the Asian actors we’re thinking of are locals, some are Asian Americans who have found work in Asian cinema and television. All are equipped for international domination.

This isn’t a list of Asian actors who have offbeat charm, who are adorable in romantic comedies, or who are impressive character actors (although most on our list are talented beyond their hotness). Cute isn’t going to cut it; pretty boy isn’t going to sell enough tickets; and let’s face it, great personality is going to get you supporting roles on TV shows, leads in oh-it’s-so-great-to-see-Asian-Americans-in-starring-roles! festival films, and supporting parts in Judd Apatow movies. (All are very respectable, appreciated, and near and dear to our hearts — but it’s just not what we’re talking about right now.)

This is about men who are striking enough to cater to international, cosmopolitan, mainstream tastes. This is about one day being on in the front pages of People magazine’s 100 Most Beautiful People, not as a token Asian, but because you have first or second billing in the next summer blockbuster. No, scratch that… it’s about being on the cover.

We’ll let the pictures/links for our top ten do the convincing, but all we’ll add is this:

1) As Asian Americans, we believe that we are in a prime position to understand American standards of beauty (for instance, skinny spiky-haired pop stars, while hot in Japan, might not be considered hot in the US), while having familiarity with a larger pool of Asian actors that your average American might not be exposed to.

2) Since the idea is to highlight men who need to come over to Hollywood, we decided to focus on a younger generation. Which left many very hot people off our list: Hiroshi Abe and Tony Leung just to name a few.

3) There were talks about making sure the list was diverse across all the Asian countries. But we scrapped that idea when certain choices didn’t seem to meet the hotness requirements we were looking for. That’s not to say that there aren’t hot men actors working in these countries. It’s just that, at this moment in time, no one who might be competitive was high profile enough for the persistent Google Image stalker (us) to find them. In other words, no national quotas. We chose to compromise on diversity, in order to not compromise on the hotness.

4) English-language skills and worldliness were originally factors we considered for the purposes of Hollywood-readiness, but sometimes people were hot enough that we completely forgot about that.

5) We’re aware of some of the controversial omissions, but we stand by them.

It’s time for us to welcome the future. And throw Hollywood some suggestions, so they’ll be able to help us spread the filmic eye-candy.

[in no particular order]

Arjun Rampal

He’s worked in Bollywood for the last eight years, managed to steer attention away from Shah Rukh Khan even when sporting gray hair and glasses, and just finished shooting a new commercial with Nicole Kidman. The ad (for a carbonated water and ginger ale beverage company) is produced by Ridley Scott and directed by Shekhar Kapur. YouTube clip: A sweet musical number in an otherwise stressful thriller, 2005’s Yakeen, costarring Priyanka Chopra.

Daniel Henney

No stranger to memorable commercials with leading Hollywood ladies, Daniel Henney is the Chicago-born actor who became a superstar in Korea, without even speaking Korean. A Best Actor “Rising Star” award for his film My Father hinted that he could actually act, which bodes well for his expectant American fans who are just waiting for him to come back. YouTube clip: a Bravo ice cream commerical that dares to test whether Henney’s hotness can make you forget there’s a cover of “Mmmbop” playing in the background

Takeshi Kaneshiro

Takeshi Kaneshiro. The reason Hong Kong is smarter than the rest of the world because their Armani ad campaign decided to plaster Takeshi Kaneshiro billboards all around town. Most known in the West for House of Flying Daggers and the two Wong Kar-wai films Chungking Express and Fallen Angels, Kaneshiro recently showed that he can also embody the role of legendary strategist Zhuge Liang. YouTube clips: The only thing better than Takeshi Kaneshiro is four Takeshi Kaneshiros and Takeshi Kaneshiro multiplying beyond count.

Won Bin

While only 32, Won Bin has been acting in Korea for over 13 years. He garnered international recognition in 2004 with Taegukgi: The Brotherhood of War, but true fans find him hottest as Han Tae-suhk in the TV drama Autumn Tale. YouTube clip: I don’t know what Forval is, but I don’t care.

Hayami Mocomochi

Half-Japanese and half-Filipino, Mokomichi is known for his roles on Japanese TV dramas such as Densha Otoko and Tokyo Tower. In his popular Zettai Kareshi (Absolute Boyfriend) series, he plays the Night Tenjo, “the perfect male humanoid programmed to be devoted and completely loyal to his lover.” YouTube clip: The boy knows how to sell a pair of acid-washed jeans.

Hrithik Roshan

It’s true that his forte is the dance, and Hollywood tends to not prioritize the art of the jaw-dropping dance number in their contemporary films. (Not yet, at least.) Luckily, Hrithik is also very good at standing still and wielding a sword (a little more useful), not to mention carrying a three-hour film while taking the audience through laughter, suspense, tears, and above all… love. Roshan already has Hollywood representation with Brillstein-Grey Entertainment, but is reportedly being choosy about his crossover role. YouTube clip: He wears a suit well too, with or without the jacket.

Dennis Oh

Born in Texas, Dennis Oh started to rise in popularity around the same time as Daniel Henney, another option for girls who appreciate broader shoulders. So far he’s acted in the TV dramas: Sweet Spy, Manyeo Yuhee, and East of Eden. YouTube clip: Gotta go with the modeling shot.

Lee Byung-Hun

His eyes talk, is a comment made from one of our collaborators. Steadily working in Korea for over 15 years, his memorable films include Joint Security Area, Bittersweet Life, and The Good, the Bad, and the Weird. Good news for Hollywood fans: Lee has a role in the upcoming G.I. Joe: The Rise of the Cobra, where he plays a character named Storm Shadow. YouTube clip: It’s good to be chivalrous and romance a lady with a waltz, but it’s also important to catch important beverages before they fall.

Junichi Okada

To be honest, we were hesitant about incuding an actor associated with Johnny’s, but we made an exception with Junichi Okada. The powerful agency Johnny & Associates trains and represents the male idols in Japan, and while there are lots of very cute pop stars that come out of that professional family, we weren’t sure that was what we were going for. However, Okada makes us remember that even Takeshi Sorimachi and Departures star Masahiro Motoki started out in a Johnny’s ’80s boy band. And look where they are now. YouTube clip: What a smooth way to endear yourself to women, as everyone knows food (especially chocolate) is the way to a girl’s heart.

Chang Chen

When he shows up in the middle of Wong Kar-wai’s Happy Together, we suddenly understand how one unassuming man in a baseball cap can give a broken soul a reason for hope. Since then he’s seduced Gong Li in Eros, thrice romanced Shu Qi in Three Times, and joined Tony Leung and Takeshi Kaneshiro in Red Cliff. YouTube clip: No one makes a hot man even hotter better than Wong Kar Wai. Here is the Wong-directed DJ Shadow video, “Six Days.”

[We're cheating. Number 11:]

Oh Ji-Ho

A last minute addition, we thought our list was complete until we found an actor that was too hot to overlook. Having acted in Korean TV shows since 2001, including Super Rookie and Couple or Trouble, Ji-Ho Oh can currently be seen starring in Queen of Housewives. He’s won multiple MBC and KBS Drama awards, including the Popularity Award in 2006. YouTube clip: After a session at the recording studio, this music video showcases clips from his 2008 drama, Single Dad in Love.

APA

The Play’s The Thing

This Saturday, April 18 from 10 pm – midnight on 89.3 KPCC, L.A. Theatre Works’ The Play’s the Thing will air M Butterfly by David Henry Hwang.  John Lithgow and B.D. Wong recreate their original roles from the Tony Award-winning production.  Inspired by an actual espionage scandal, a French diplomat discovers the startling truth about his Chinese mistress. Also stars Margaret Cho, David Dukes, Joanna Frank, Arye Gross and Kathryn Layng.

Next Saturday, April 25 from 10 pm – midnight on 89.3 KPCC, L.A. Theatre Works’ The Play’s the Thing will air Park Your Car in the Harvard Yard by Israel Horovitz, starring Judith Ivey and Jason Robards.  Jacob Brakish, the toughest, meanest teacher at Gloucester High School, is dying… at home.  His advertisement for a housekeeper during his final year is answered by a mousey 40-year-old named Katherine, a woman Jacob has forgotten he flunked years ago.  The broadcast includes an interview with Israel Horovitz.

L.A. Theatre Works’ radio theater series, The Play’s the Thing, airs locally every Saturday night from 10 pm to midnight on 89.3 FM KPCC Southern California Public Radio, and is streamed at www.kpcc.org for one week following each broadcast.

To get a full schedule,  go to the L.A. Theatre Works website at www.latw.org and follow the link through the “Radio Theatre Series” heading and then “Episode Guide” or go directly to www.scpr.org for KPCC.

The series can also be heard on 89.7 WGBH in Boston; 91.5 FM WBEZ in Chicago; 94.9 KUOW in Seattle; 93.5 FM KRTS “Marfa Public Radio” in Texas; 90.5 FM KUT in Austin; 88.9 FM KUNM in Albuquerque; 91.5 FM, Interlochen Public Radio in Northern Michigan; 94.1 KPFA in Northern California; 91.1 FM KRCB in Sonoma County; 89.1 KUOR in Redlands; as well as on many other public radio stations nationwide.  Selected programs from LATW are also heard internationally over BBC World Service, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Radio Telefis Eirann (Ireland), Radio Hong Kong, and Radio New Zealand.  The L.A. Theatre Works Audio Theatre Collection is available in bookstores, libraries, through their catalog, digitally on itunes, overdrive.com, audible.com, and on the L.A. Theatre Works website at www.latw.org.

Additional support for the series is provided by AudioFile Magazine.  Listeners can visit their website at www.audiofilemagazine.com to view 65 reviews of LATW plays and hear sound clips from them. 

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