Asian American Culture on Stage: The History of the East West Players, and: Misreading the Chinese Character: Images of the Chinese in Euroamerican Drama to 1925 (review)

Asian American Culture Onstage: The History of the East West Players. By Yuko Kurahashi. New York: Garland, 1999.

Misreading the Chinese Character: Images of the Chinese in Euroamerican Drama to 1925. By Dave Williams. New York: Peter Lang, 2000.

Scholars of Asian American literature have tended to overlook play texts and the history of theatrical performance in favor of other literary forms-novels, short stories, poems, oral histories. There are, no doubt, several factors, which contribute to the general dearth of full-length studies devoted to Asian American theatre. Theatrical performances, by their very nature, are elusive and difficult to pin down on the printed page; technically, they cease to exist entirely when the final curtain falls. Oftentimes play scripts, the raw materials of performance, are not published or otherwise made readily available. Theatre artists live itinerant lives, and crucial primary sources, such as rehearsal notes, tend to be thrown away or lost. The theatre has, however, played a vital role in the emergence of Asian American consciousness, and as such, though too often neglected, is a worthy topic for scholarly investigation.

With few exceptions, Asian American theatre history must be gleaned from introductions to play scripts in anthologies. These are informative and well written but by necessity attenuated, as five of the currently available Asian American drama anthologies demonstrate: Misha Berson's Between Worlds (Theatre Communications Group, 1990), Velina Hasu Houston's The Politics of Life (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993) and But Still, Like Air, I'll Rise (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1997), Roberta Uno's Unbroken Thread (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1993), and Brian Nelson's Asian American Theatre: Nine Plays from the Multiethnic Landscape (Applause Books, 1997). ¹ Dave Williams's and Yuko Kurahashi's full-length studies, therefore, enable them to investigate their subjects in depth. Both texts provide readers with much new information and contribute effectively to what is hopefully a growing body of published knowledge devoted to both the history of Asian representation on the American stage and the Asian American theatre movement.

Dave Williams's Misreading the Chinese Character: Images of the Chinese in Euroamerican Drama to 1925 focuses on those theatrical representations of specifically Chinese characters which antedated the rise of the film industry. As such, the study goes a long way toward shining light on forgotten but important chapters of American theatre history and the role it played in contributing to a cultural climate conducive to the acceptance of Asian stereotypes by Euroamerican spectators. The creation of Asian "gangsters, gooks, geishas, and geeks" ² has typically been placed at the feet of the American film industry by writers from Frank Chin (AIIIEEEE!!!!!, Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press, 1974) to Elaine Kim (Asian American Literature : An Introduction to the Writings and Their Social Context, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1982) and Helen Zia (Asian American Dreams, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000). And while it cannot be argued that Hollywood was guiltless in the dissemination of not merely inaccurate but repulsive stereotypes of Asians, it is also true that the film industry did not invent those images. In fact, and much to its shame, it was the American theatre which was instrumental in preparing fertile cultural ground for the acceptance of and demand for those myriad cinematic incarnations of Charlie Chan, Fu Manchu, dragon lady, and lotus blossom.

Using a chronological approach to his material, Williams analyzes a remarkable number of scripts, none of them easily come by. Chinese stage characters (inevitably portrayed by Caucasian actors sporting "yellowface" makeup) made their American debut in Philadelphia in 1767 with The Orphan of China, a bombastic tragedy adapted from a Ming Dynasty drama. The play, which provided the first and only images...