ABSTRACT
In 1990, the Actors’ Equity Association (AEA) refused its permission to allow actor Jonathan Pryce to reprise his yellowface leading role as the biracial Engineer in Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boubil’s Miss Saigon, a musical loosely based on Puccini’s Madame Butterfly. While the AEA eventually capitulated and the show went on, the Miss Saigon protests marked an important moment in the history of Asian American representation, drawing attention to how Asian Americans banded together to protest the long history of racist “oriental” stereotypes still present on stage and screen. Chapter eight surveys the trajectory of Asian American arts and media activism with particular attention to the 1990-1991 protests of Miss Saigon and after. It explores issues of casting, representation, yellowface, and whitewashing through looking at plays such as Philip Kan Gotanda’s Yankee Dawg You Die, David Henry Hwang, Yellow Face , Sun Mee Chomet’s Asiamnesia, and Lloyd Suh’s Charles Francis Chan Jr.’s Exotic Oriental Murder Mystery.
