Asian Mutations: Yellowface from More Light to the Royal Shakespeare Company’s The Orphan of Zhao

Abstract

In this article I examine the contention that the Royal Shakespeare Company’s (RSC’s) The Orphan of Zhao used yellowface. By comparing The Orphan of Zhao to a recent production of Bryony Lavery’s (1997) play, More Light, I argue that yellowface is a highly mutable practice. In particular, I suggest that in the period between these two productions, contemporary British understandings of yellowface shifted from ideas around racial impersonation using prosthetics and make-up to the casting of white actors in Asian roles in general. This latter conceptualisation of yellowface draws attention to the inequalities, exclusions, but also the possibilities of casting in The Orphan of Zhao. The article offers a nuanced account of yellowface in the RSC production by attending to how racial-ethnic minorities are represented in theatre.

Notes

1. Anna Chen, ‘Yellowface’, in Reaching for My Gnu: Poetry by Anna Chen (Ipswich: AAAARGH! Press, 2012), p. 49. Reproduced by permission of Anna Chen.

2. Sean Metzger, ‘Charles Parsloe’s Chinese Fetish: An Example of Yellowface Performance in Nineteenth-Century American Melodrama’, Theatre Journal, 56.4 (2004), 627–51 (p. 627).

3. Krystyn R. Moon, Yellowface: Creating the Chinese in American Popular Music and Performance, 1850s–1920s (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2005), p. 42.

4. Ibid., p. 6.

5. Graham Russell Gao Hodges, Anna May Wong: From Laundryman’s Daughter to Hollywood Legend (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), p. 153.

6. Meaghan Morris, ‘Learning from Bruce Lee: Pedagogy and Political Correctness in Martial Arts Cinema’, in Keyframes: Popular Cinema and Cultural Studies, ed. by Matthew Tinkcom and Amy Villarejo (London: Routledge, 2001), pp. 171–86 (p. 183).

7. The Inn of the Sixth Happiness, dir. by Mark Robson (Twentieth Century Fox, 1958).

8. Angela Pao, No Safe Spaces: Re-casting Race, Ethnicity and Nationality in American Theater (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010), p. 2.

9. Ayanna Thompson, Passing Strange: Shakespeare, Race and Contemporary America (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 77.

10. William H. Sun, ‘Power and Problems of Performance Across Ethnic Lines: An Alternative Approach to Nontraditional Casting’, TDR, 44.4 (2000), 86–95 (p. 87).

11. Thompson, Passing Strange, p. 3. See also Angela Pao, No Safe Spaces, p. 6.

12. August Wilson, The Ground on Which I Stand (London: Nick Hern Books, 1996), p. 30; compare with Robert Brustein, ‘Unity from Diversity’, New Republic, 209.3–4 (July 1993), p. 71.

13. Francesca T. Royster, ‘The Chicago Shakespeare Theatre’s Rose Rage: Whiteness, Terror and the Fleshwork of a Theatre in a Post-Colorblind Age’, in Colorblind Shakespeare: New Perspectives on Race and Performance, ed. by Ayanna Thompson (London: Routledge, 2006), pp. 221–40 (p. 221).

14. Pao, No Safe Spaces, p. 3.

15. Thompson, Colorblind Shakespeare, pp. 6–7.

16. Ayanna Thompson, ‘Practising a Theory/Theorizing a Practice: An Introduction to Shakespearean Colorblind Casting’, in Colorblind Shakespeare, ed. by Ayanna Thompson (London: Routledge, 2006), pp. 1–24 (p. 7).

17. Karen Shimakawa, National Abjection: The Asian American Body Onstage (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002), p. 51.

18. Sun, ‘Power and Problems’, p. 87.

19. For an excellent overview of the protests, see Esther K. Lee, ‘The Miss Saigon Controversy’, in Esther K. Lee, A History of Asian American Theatre (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 177–99.

20. Gregory Doran, cited in Matt Trueman, ‘Royal Shakespeare Company Under Fire for Not Casting Enough Asian Actors’, Guardian, 19 October 2012 <http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2012/oct/19/royal-shakespeare-company-asian-actors> [accessed 20 October 2012].

21. As I have examined in detail elsewhere, the protests against the RSC were propelled not only by BEAs, but also by Asian Americans, Asian Australians, Singaporeans, and many other racial-ethnic groups, both in the UK and beyond. See Amanda Rogers, Performing Asian Transnationalisms: Theatre, Identity and the Geographies of Performance (New York: Routledge, 2014).

22. See Paul Chan, ‘Royal Shakespeare Company’ Royal Shakespeare Company Facebook page, 22 October 2012 <https://www.facebook.com/thersc/posts/10151107942763235> [accessed: 23 October 2012]; see also Daniel York, RSC Facebook page, 20 October 2012 <https://www.facebook.com/thersc/posts/10151107942763235> [accessed 21 October 2012].

23. Melody Brown, RSC Facebook page, 19 October 2012 <https://www.facebook.com/thersc/posts/10151107942763235> [accessed: 20 October 2012].

24. See Camille F. Forbes, ‘Dancing with “Racial Feet”: Bert Williams and the Performance of Blackness’, Theatre Journal, 56.3 (October 2004), 603–25; Catherine M. Cole and Tracy C. Davis, ‘Routes of Blackface’, TDR, 57.2 (Summer 2013), 7–12.

25. See: Aoife Monks, ‘“Genuine Negroes and Real Bloodhounds”: Cross-Dressing, Eugene O’Neill, the Wooster Group, and The Emperor Jones’, Modern Drama, 48.3 (2005), 540–64.

26. Tina Yih-Ting Chen, Double Agency: Acts of Impersonation in Asian American Literature and Culture (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005), p. xix.

27. Erika Fischer-Lichte, The Transformative Power of Performance: A New Aesthetics, trans. by Saskya Iris Jain (Abingdon: Routledge, 2008), p. 76.

28. Bryony Lavery, More Light (London: Faber, 2001).

29. Round Pebble Theatre Company, in association with UnderTheBed and Jasper Britton, More Light, dir. by Catrina Lear, Arcola Theatre, London, first performed 12 May 2009.

30. Lavery, More Light, p. 3.

31. Ibid., p. 9.

32. See Lisa Lowe, Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics (Durham: Duke University Press, 1996).

33. Lavery, More Light, see pp. 25, 26, 30.

34. Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture (Abingdon: Routledge, 1994), p. 95.

35. Lavery, More Light, p. 23.

36. Catrina Lear, 27 May 2009 (12:48 pm), comment on Lyn Gardner, ‘At Last, Theatre is Shedding More Light on Feminism’, Guardian Theatre Blog, 24 May 2009 <http://www.theguardian.com/stage/theatreblog/2009/may/24/theatre-more-light-feminism> [accessed 3 March 2014].

37. Lyn Gardner, 26 May 2009 (11:56 pm), comment on Gardner, ‘At Last, Theatre is Shedding More Light on Feminism’.

38. Rustom Bharucha, ‘Foreign Asia/Foreign Shakespeare: Dissenting Notes on New Asian Interculturality, Postcoloniality, and Recolonization’, Theatre Journal 56.1 (2004), 1–28.

39. Enough Rope, 27 May 2009 (1:21 pm), comment on Gardner, ‘At Last, Theatre is Shedding More Light on Feminism’.

40. Fischer-Lichter, Transformative Power, p. 78.

41. Emily Roxworthy, ‘Blackface Behind Barbed Wire: Gender and Racial Triangulation in the Japanese American Internment Camps’, TDR, 57.2 (2013), 123–42 (p. 138).

42. Ian Shuttleworth, 27 May 2009 (2:45 pm), comment on ‘Review of More Light’, West End Whingers, 26 May 2009 <http://westendwhingers.wordpress.com/2009/05/26/review-more-light-arcola-theatre/> [accessed 3 March 2014].

43. Catrina Lear, 27 May 2009 (12:48 pm), comment on Gardener, ‘At Last, Theatre is Shedding More Light on Feminism.’

44. See Leslie McCall, ‘The Complexity of Intersectionality’, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 30.3 (2005), 1771–1802.

45. Dtks888, 26 May 2009 (8:12 pm), comment on Gardner, ‘At Last, Theatre is Shedding More Light on Feminism’.

46. See for instance Roxworthy, ‘Behind Barbed Wire’, pp. 123–42.

47. Broderick Chow, ‘Here is a Story For Me: Representation and Visibility in Miss Saigon and The Orphan of Zhao’, Contemporary Theatre Review, 24.4 (2014), 507–16.

48. James Fenton, The Orphan of Zhao (London: Faber, 2012), p. 19.

49. James Fenton, ‘The Orphan of Zhao at the RSC: A Very Modern Massacre’, Guardian, 30 October 2012 <http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2012/oct/30/orphan-of-zhao-rsc> [accessed 1 November 2012].

50. Anna Chen, ‘RSC The Orphan of Zhao review: Aladdin for Middle-Class Grown-Ups’, Morning Star Online, 15 November 2012 <http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/news/content/view/full/126082> [accessed 16 November 2012].

51. Millie Taylor, British Pantomime Performance (Bristol: Intellect, 2007), p. 14.

52. Aoife Monks, The Actor in Costume (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), p. 1.

53. Amanda Rogers, ‘Review: The Orphan of Zhao’, Theatrical Geographies, 6 January 2013 < http://theatricalgeographies.wordpress.com/2013/01/06/review-the-orphan-of-zhao/> [accessed 30 June 2014].

54. Fischer-Lichte, Transformative Power, p. 82.

55. Monks, The Actor in Costume, p. 1.

56. Metzger, ‘Charles Parsloe’, p. 631.

57. Taylor, British Pantomime Performance, p. 14.

58. Moon, Yellowface, p. 6.

59. Ibid., p. 42.

60. Michael Billington, ‘The Orphan of Zhao – Review’, Guardian, 9 November 2012 <http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2012/nov/09/the-orphan-of-zao-review> [accessed 9 November 2012].

61. Saffron Walkling, ‘A World Elsewhere: The Orphan of Zhao at the RSC, Review Part 1’, Saffron Walkling, 23 January 2013 <http://saffronatstudy.wordpress.com/tag/hamlet/> [accessed 28 February 2014].

62. Monks, Actor in Costume, p. 1.

63. Dorinne Kondo, About Face: Performing Race in Fashion and Theater (New York: Routledge, 2007), p. 231.

64. Special Relationship Productions in association with the Park Theatre, Yellow Face, dir. by Alex Sims, Park Theatre, London, first performed 21 May 2013.

65. Lyn Gardner, ‘Yellow Face – Review’ Guardian, 29 May 2013 <http://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/may/29/yellow-face-review> [accessed 1 June 2013].

66. Matt Trueman, ‘Yellow Face’, Time Out 24 May 2013 <http://www.timeout.com/london/theatre/yellow-face> [accessed 1 June 2013].