Francis Joo on Yellow Face, a play about what we think America is about

yellow facewhich today completes a successful revival at the Haynes Theater in the Roundabout, is a semi-autobiographical play written by David Henry Hwang. How semi-autobiographical? The main character, JHH, is a playwright attempting to direct a production of David Henry Hwang’s 1993 play. Face valueinfamous failure from the author M. Butterflymaking Hwang the first Asian American playwright to win the Tony Award for Best Play in 1988.

But yellow face It also touches on the US government’s fears of Chinese interference in US elections and the suspicions that have fallen on Chinese churches, Chinese scholars and Chinese businessmen, including David’s own father, Henry Yuan Hwang. If it all sounds in the chimeconsider that yellow face was first produced almost 20 years ago in 2007, first in Los Angeles. and then in New York at the Public Theater.

“It’s amazing,” says Francis Joo. Observer. Joo plays HYH, a character based on Henry Yuan Hwan, who first played the role in Public. “David wrote yellow face 20 years ago when this happened, but it feels like this is a game of today. We are still talking about the same issues. What do we think America is? Who should be able to decide who we are? Why can’t we decide for ourselves? I’m grateful to be on this show right now because I feel like I’m not just sitting at home screaming in front of the TV. I get to do his play and talk to people about how we all come together.”

In the 90s, David Henry Hwang wrote Face value to address representation issues, following the furore that erupted when he criticized the casting of Englishman Jonathan Pryce as an Asian man in Miss Saigon. One piece yellow face it’s a farce about who will play with whom and the frustrations DHH experiences during the production Face value (which quickly closed after the eighth preview). But the other part has to do with the destruction of HYH’s immigrant dreams. The first part makes you laugh; the second part brought me to tears.

Henry Yuan Hwang started out as a laundryman, then took a sharp right turn and became a successful banker, founding the Far Eastern National Bank. In the 1990s, during a government investigation into China’s alleged involvement in money laundering and election interference, the US dechartered the Far Eastern National Bank. Henry truly believed in the American way of life; he considered himself a kind of James Stewart, doing good for others. The government’s devaluation of Chinese citizens was a cruel betrayal of his beliefs, and the threat of imprisonment further deepened his bitterness.

Like M. Butterfly, yellow face was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize when it was first awarded in 2007. Francis Joo’s performance as HYH on The Public earned him both an Obie Award and a Lucille Lortel Award. Now, 17 years later, he’s on Broadway, vying for a Tony Award for Best Actor. Considering how perfect Joo is for the role, it’s hard to imagine that he wasn’t the best choice for the role. But when yellow face The premiere took place at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles. David had another actor in mind to play the father, Tzi Ma, an actor he grew up with and who directed many of his original plays at The Public. When Ma was unable to give workshops and readings at Stanford before a concert in Los Angeles, director Leigh Silverman invited Joo on board but promised he would never get to play the role—words she subsequently ate when Tzi Ma couldn’t make it for public display. .

“I had hopes of doing it,” Joo admits, “but it wasn’t for me. I realized very early on that my job was not to own a role. This is to serve the role. It’s serving the playwright, what the playwright wants to say, what the director wants to say—and that’s a role that I really enjoy because it’s given me the opportunity to work on shows where I agree with what they’re saying. »

The Bay Area native adds, “The genius of David and Lee in this play is that they say, ‘We’re all funny talking about these issues when they’re so simple.’ If David’s father believed he could be Jimmy Stewart, why aren’t we all seen as having the same human potential – without all that fog of seeing people based on where they come from, what class they are, what gender they are? are? Why is it so difficult for us to simply see this? We do not yet live in that ideal world. We don’t live in a world where white people can play for Asians.”

Joo worked hard to develop his father-son relationship with Daniel Dae Kim, who plays DHH. “There was a moment in rehearsal where instead of talking to each other on the phone, we turned to face the audience,” Joo recalls. “We decided that we would rehearse just by looking at each other. I clearly remember being at that rehearsal, just looking at him and suddenly glowing with such pride and admiration for this man, as if he really were my son.”

HYH avoids jail but not metastasizing cancer as investigation ends empty-handed. Joo elegantly and understatedly recites the obituary that David actually wrote for Henry. He then moves into the thick fog, not knowing which way to turn.

“It took a while to figure out what we wanted to say at that moment and how it should be implemented,” Joo notes. “Lee, to his credit, gives all of us – actors and designers alike – the opportunity to try something new. She wants to see it all. She says, “Try this,” and we come to the same conclusions together.

“I think anyone who has a parent, anyone who has a child, will get something from this play. Although it starts out as a big farce, it then becomes very serious and very political. It all comes down to the wonderful relationship between father and son, what parents want for their children and what they don’t allow themselves, what responsibility children feel towards their parents.”

If you are not lucky enough to see Yellow Face on Broadway, don’t despair. The show will be taped later this week for PBS. “I don’t know when it will air, but they hope it will air sometime in the spring,” Joo says. “I’m very glad that this play – this production – will have a wider audience. I hope that PBS will show this again and again over the next few years because it is a great reminder of the hopes we have for this country and the dreams we have for America’s best values.”