David Henry Hwang, a New York-based playwright and Tony Award-winner, started his career over 30 years ago with his first play FOB (stands for “fresh off the boat”), in which he explored questions of Asian-American identity and assimilation. He has since worked in various media, from TV and film to opera and musical. His latest play, Yellow Face, a comedy based on his own experience as the leading protestor against the casting of a Caucasian actor for an Asian role in the 1990s, returns to the subject of race and ethnic identity in a growing multicultural society. At a time in which, according to Maclean’s, U of T is “Too Asian,” an investigation of these issues remains as relevant as it was 30 years ago.
Yellow Face is scheduled to play at Hart House from March 4-12 and you can catch him for an onstage talk on March 8 and for a post-performance Q&A on March 9.
THE VARSITY: It being a semi-autobiographic piece, what is your relationship with Yellow Face? Do you feel exposed when you watch it, like you are reading a part of your diary to the public over and over again?
DAVID HENRY HWANG: It does and it doesn’t, but I don’t feel so exposed when I watch it now. Many artists write autobiographical work and the difference here is that I chose to name the main character after myself. Paradoxically, once I decided to do that I started to be able to write him as a character and I could make up things that were not true. Therefore, I’m not really exposed because nobody actually knows what is true and what is not. I mean, some things are obviously true because you can find them in the paper but a lot of things the audience does not know for sure about.
TV: It’s interesting that once you named the character after yourself it became a character of its own. Why do you think that is?
DHH: I don’t know — it is kind of counterintuitive. One would expect that once I named the character after myself I would feel more obliged to make it truthful, but I guess there is some sort of perverse impulse in me. Once I made a character out of myself it was really fun to kind of tear the character down and make him the butt of the joke in a lot of the scenes; to make him to some extent the most foolish character in the play.
TV: Yellow Face premiered in 2007 in Los Angeles. Do you think that since then the main issue you are addressing, that of Asian representation in the Western media, has changed?
DHH: Yes, I think there are things that continued to change and there are things that continue to need addressing. For instance, since 2007, at least in America, we have had the experience of an Asian-American pop band, Far East Movement, having the number one song in the country. I didn’t necessarily think I would live to see the day that would happen, so there are things that continue to change. There is a tendency that developed over the last couple of years to cast Asians in a lot of comic roles, and you can argue whether that is a good thing, but in terms of there being more roles in the mainstream media, yes, there are more roles out there. Now we can argue about a) the quality of the roles, and b) does that mean that the mainstream media represents the ethnic diversity of America? The answer to that is no, it still clearly does not, but it is moving in that direction.
TV: You seem to be coming back to this issue of ethnic identity throughout your career. What notions have changed for you? For example, would your first piece FOB look the same as it did when it premiered in 1978?
DHH: I do think things have changed and I think the reason I went back to ethnic identity issues in Yellow Face is because I wanted to look back on the last 20 years and the development of multiculturalism in North America; to look at some things that have changed, some of the excesses and the comic, absurd things about the multicultural movement. So that is why I think I needed to write Yellow Face at this point of my life. Having done that, I am not that interested in Asian-American identity issues at the moment. I feel like Yellow Face was sort of my statement, at least for now. My new play is more about U.S.-China relations, which is not about ethnic identity.
TV: Does it bother you that, due to your gravitation around that topic, you are labeled as “the Asian-American playwright”?
DHH: I have kind of gone back and forth on that. There have been times when it bothered me and times where I really embraced it. At this point I see it like this: the reality is I am Asian-American and I am a playwright, so saying I am an Asian-American playwright is literally true. And I think that everybody who is fortunate enough to have some success gets labeled in one way or another. So you know I get labeled as an Asian-American writer, and that is okay.
TV: Are there topics you are concerned with that you have not yet explored in your work?
DHH: I am sort of fascinated by what is going on right now between the West and China; the prospect of China as an economic power, as a political power and how that shift of power balance between Asia and the West is going to play out. You know, how do I feel about China becoming a world power and what is going to happen to its relationship with the West? I have a lot of questions in that area, which does happen to be one of the critical world issues of the moment. So that is kind of a big issue and fortunately for me as an artist it is one that I find very interesting.
TV: You will be speaking onstage at Hart House about your career. What advice do you have for young people wanting to get involved with theatre professionally?
DHH: I think the really important thing to realize is nobody knows what is going to be successful and what is not. And if people are trying to tell you that they know then they are fooling themselves and they are fooling you. What that means is that if you’re starting out as an artist, or really at any point in your career, you have to do something that excites you, you have to do something that you love. It is just as likely that something you love is going to be a commercial or critical success as something that you try to do to only to be successful. If you try to do something for yourself that you need to explore then have that satisfaction, you will always have that achievement. If it is successful, that is like icing on the cake, but if you’re only hoping that it’s going to be successful and it’s not, then you really have not gotten anything. So if you do the art you really care about, it is just as likely to be successful as if you try to do it for commercial reasons.
TV: Were you always this certain about the path you chose? Because I read that initially you wanted to go into law.
DHH: Well, when I went to college I had no idea what I wanted to do (laughs). All I knew is that I was not good at math and science, so I was not going to become a doctor. And I was pretty verbal so I thought “Okay, I could go to law school.” It was just something I thought I could do if I could not think of anything else. And then fortunately I discovered playwriting in college and felt strongly about it. I did not know if I was going to be able to make a living out of it, I did not know if I was going to be a successful “playwright.” I just knew that I wanted to do it and I was going to try to do it and luckily things worked out.
