ReAct Theatre and Pork Filled Players present Northwest premiere of David Henry Hwang’s Yellow Face
ReAct Theatre and the Pork Filled Players (with sponsorship by the Furuta Lee Foundation) proudly present the Northwest premiere of YELLOW FACE, the Pulitzer-finalist and Obie-award winning comic “mockumentary” about mistaken racial identity by David Henry Hwang. Casting himself as the protagonist, Hwang recounts his (maybe true, maybe not) hard-hitting attempts to protest yellow face casting in Miss Saigon on Broadway–-and his own accidental casting of a white man as Asian. Mixing real events, real headlines and real people with fictional characters and dramatic license, YELLOW FACE explores and pokes fun at the role of race in modern American society, media, politics and theatre.
YELLOW FACE opens on Friday, August 5 and runs through Saturday, September 3 at the Richard Hugo House (1634 11th Ave in Seattle’s Capitol Hill area). Shows are 8 pm Fridays and Saturdays at 2 pm and 8 pm. Admission is $15 General Admission, $12 Students/Seniors/Artists at the door; tickets can also be purchased in advance at Brown Paper Tickets (http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/181433) for $12 General, $9 Students/Seniors/Artists. Discounted group rates are also available for parties of 10 or more. For more information and ticket reservations, please call the ReAct Box Office at (206)364-3283 or visit online at http://www.reactheatre.org. Additional information is also available at the Pork Filled Players’ website at http://www.porkfilled.com (or email react.works@usa.net or oink@porkfilled.com).
Directed by ReAct's Artistic Director, David Hsieh and co-produced by Pork Filled Players’ Artistic Director, Roger Tang, this Northwest Premiere of YELLOW FACE stars the local multi-ethnic talents of Julia Beers, Jeremy Behrens, Stephanie Kim, Agastya Kohli, Lee Osorio, Henry Vu and Moses Yim. Lighting designed by Maggie Lee and stage management by Jason Panzer.
“When I first read this play,” says David Hsieh, Artistic Director of React, “I loved it and I knew wanted to work on it someday. That someday has arrived. I hope it amuses our audiences too.”
“In YELLOW FACE, David has a great time playing with what’s real, what isn’t, what’s gossip and what’s hype,” says Roger Tang, artistic director of the Pork Filled Players and college friend of the Tony Award winning author. “He basically dresses himself up in sketch comedy drag, warps the fourth wall as the play’s protagonist and says some meaty things about in today’s society, which makes the play perfect for both Pork Filled and ReAct.”
David Henry Hwang’s other plays include M. Butterfly (1988 Tony Award, 1989 Pulitzer Prize Finalist), Golden Child (1998 Tony Award nomination, 1997 OBIE Award), F.O.B. (1981 OBIE Award), The Dance and the Railroad (1982 Drama Desk Award nomination), Family Devotions (1982 Drama Desk Award nomination) and Bondage. He wrote the libretti for the Broadway musicals Elton John and Tim Rice’s Aida (co-author), Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Flower Drum Song (revival, 2002 Tony Award nomination) and Disney’s Tarzan. In opera, his libretti include four works with composer Philip Glass: The Voyage (Metropolitan Opera), 1000 Airplanes on the Roof, Sound and Beauty (seen in Chicago at the Court Theatre), and the upcoming Icarus at the Edge of Time; as well as Osvaldo Golijov’s Ainadamar (two 2007 Grammy Awards), Unsuk Chin’s Alice in Wonderland (Opernwelt 2007 “World Premiere of the Year”) and Howard Shore’s The Fly. Hwang penned the feature films M. Butterfly, Golden Gate and Possession (co-author), and co-wrote the song “Solo” with Prince. He sits on the Council of the Dramatists Guild, and served by appointment of President Clinton on the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities. His newest show, Chinglish, premieres at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre this July and will be at New York’s Public Theatre for their 2011-12 season.
Established in 1993, ReAct strives to provide affordable quality entertainment using primarily non-traditional and multi-ethnic casting. Its purpose is to give artists of all backgrounds the opportunity to work on mainstream projects they might not normally have access to due to ethnicity, gender, age or experience. A federally recognized 501(c)(3) non-profit philanthropic company, ReAct also works to serve our community by using its productions to raise money, awareness and supplies for other arts and humanitarian organizations. ReAct's portion of this co-production will benefit the Lifelong AIDS Alliance, Theatre Puget Sound, and other charities.
Since 1997, the Pork Filled Players have waged a never-ending battle to tickle the funny bone of audiences of every race, creed and gender across the Northwest. Beneath their guises as mild-mannered engineers, journalists and office workers, the Players have honed humor like a scalpel (or is it dull meat cleaver?) to whack away at notions of race, class and gender in 21st Century America. Writing their own, original sketch comedy or producing Northwest premieres of traditional comedic plays, the Players are the Northwest’s longest-lived institution for Asian American theatre, using humor to achieve maximum tongue-in-cheekiness, biting cultural/political satire and hilarious racial disharmony with Amazing Kung-Fu Grip(tm) zaniness.
