The Deconstruction and Reconstruction of Racial Identity: A Study of the Dramatic Arts in David Henry Hwang’s Yellow Face

Abstract

After the immediate success of M. Butterfly by Chinese American playwright David Henry Hwang, Yellow Face is Hwang’s other play that carries forward innovation in terms of theatricality and delivers an ideal of harmonious intercultural relationships and multicultural integration. Yellow Face is a semi-autobiographical Pirandellian comedy built out of a trio of Hwang and his father’s real-life experiences in an attempt to blur the line between reality and fictionality, thus exposing the ambiguity and penetrability of boundaries. This article analyzes the Alienation-Effect of the structure, acting and stage setting in Yellow Face to probe into how, by means of A-Effect, Hwang deconstructs the essentialist notion of race and reveals the possibility of reconstructing a fluid identity.