I ENJOY BEING A (ASIAN NORTH AMERICAN) GIRL: THE EVOLUTION OF ASIANNES IN NORTH AMERICAN MUSICAL THEATRE PDF Free Download
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“I ENJOY BEING A (ASIAN NORTH AMERICAN) GIRL”:
THE EVOLUTION OF ASIANNESS IN NORTH AMERICAN MUSICAL THEATRE
by
Mikayla Kwan
B.A. (Hons), Sheridan College, 2022
A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF
THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF
MASTER OF ARTS
in
THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE AND POSTDOCTORAL STUDIES
(Theatre)
THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA
(Vancouver)
July 2025
© Mikayla Kwan, 2025
The following individuals certify that they have read, and recommend to the Faculty of
Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies for acceptance, the thesis entitled:
“I Enjoy Being a (Asian North American) Girl”: The Evolution of Asianness in North
American Musical Theatre
submitted by
Mikayla Kwan
in partial fulfilment of the requirements for
the degree of
Master of Arts
in
Theatre
Examining Committee:
Dr. Olivia Michiko Gagnon, Assistant Professor, Theatre Studies, UBC
Supervisor
Dr. Siyuan Liu, Professor, Theatre Studies, UBC
Supervisory Committee Member
ii
Abstract
“I Enjoy Being a (Asian North American) Girl”: The Evolution of Asianness in North
American Musical Theatre traces how Asian representations in North American musical
theatre have evolved from the 1800s to present day through historical contexts of
immigration and labor. I argue that while constructions of Asianness in North American
musical theatre and its early forms created a limiting image of the Asian grounded in
historical stereotypes, contemporary musical theatre has responded by expanding the
possibilities for Asian representation as grounded in multiplicity. I analyze the presence of
Asian stereotypes such as the China Doll, the Chinese Coolie, the Model Minority, and the
Dragon Lady in well-known musicals such as Anything Goes (1934), On The Town (1944),
The King and I (1951), Flower Drum Song (1958 and 2002), and Miss Saigon (1991 and
2017). I examine casting in specific Canadian musical theatre productions such as Musical
Stage Company’s Next To Normal (2019), The Globe Theatre’s The Little Mermaid (2017),
and the Confederation Centre’s Anne of Green Gables: The Musical (2022). I investigate
representations of Asianness in new Asian Canadian musicals Soft Magical Tofu Boys (2024)
and MEAT (2023).
I employ theoretical frameworks such as José Esteban Muñoz’s disidentifications,
Anne Anlin Cheng’s ornamentalism, and Karen Shimakawa’s abjection to explore how Asian
stereotypes emerged through repetition and how they function both in society and on-stage. I
employ interviews conducted with Asian Canadian musical theatre artists such as Aaron Jan,
Damon Bradley Jang, Genny Sermonia, Julio Fuentes, Kelsey Verzotti, Kevin Wong,
Kimberly-Ann Truong, Nam Nguyen, Rosie Simon, and Stephanie Sy, in order to gauge their
experiences and understandings of Asianness’s evolution in musical theatre.
Ultimately, this thesis insists upon the importance of unfolding the historical contexts
that frame Asians in North America on and off stage in order to understand the emergence of
stereotypes, as well as how to subvert, build upon, and evolve away from them and toward
more expansive, heterogenous, and life-giving renderings. I aim to position my work as a
vehicle that can impact both musical theatre creation and education, with a specific focus on
how Asian experiences are represented.
iii
Lay Summary
This thesis examines how Asian representations in musical theatre have evolved from the
1800s to present day. I map histories of Asian immigration and labor in the United States and
Canada to track the emergence of Asian stereotypes like the China Doll, the Chinese Coolie,
the Model Minority, and the Dragon Lady. I then hone in on how these stereotypes have
appeared on Broadway in shows like Anything Goes, On The Town, The King and I, Flower
Drum Song, and Miss Saigon. In a turn toward the local and contemporary, I examine how
“non-traditional” casting and Asian stereotypes affect Asian representations in Canadian
musical theatre like Next to Normal, The Little Mermaid, Anne of Green Gables: The
Musical, Soft Magical Tofu Boys, and MEAT. This thesis ultimately argues that
representations of Asianness in North American musical theatre have evolved from limiting
and monolithic toward diverse and heterogeneous.
iv
Preface
This thesis is an original, unpublished, independent work of the author, Mikayla Kwan.
The research was approved by the UBC Behavioural Research Ethics Board, certificate number:
H23-03170. No Generative Artificial Intelligence tools were used in the research process,
development, or writing of the thesis
This thesis pulls from unpublished work I had done as an undergraduate research
assistant on “You've Got to Be Carefully Taught: Decolonizing the Golden Age Musical” at
Sheridan College under the supervision of Adam White. I did extensive research on Flower
Drum Song, the Chop Suey Circuit, The Mikado, and yellowface under this program.
v
Table of Contents
Abstract................................................................................................................................................ iii
Lay Summary.......................................................................................................................................iv
Preface....................................................................................................................................................v
Table of Contents................................................................................................................................. vi
Acknowledgements............................................................................................................................. vii
INTRODUCTION................................................................................................................................ 1
CHAPTER ONE: HISTORICIZING STEREOTYPES................................................................... 7
Theories of Stereotyping and Orientalism........................................................................................7
The Practice of Yellowface...............................................................................................................8
ASIAN STEREOTYPES..............................................................................................................11
The China Doll / Yellow Woman............................................................................................. 11
The Chinese Coolie.................................................................................................................. 15
The Model Minority.................................................................................................................18
THE CHOP SUEY CIRCUIT..................................................................................................... 22
The Dragon Lady..................................................................................................................... 22
The Chop Suey Circuit.............................................................................................................23
CONCLUSION............................................................................................................................. 26
CHAPTER TWO: BROADWAY / COMMERCIAL MUSICAL THEATRE..............................28
EARLY MUSICALS: Anything Goes (1934) and On The Town (1944)................................. 29
Anything Goes (1934)..............................................................................................................29
On The Town (1944)................................................................................................................ 35
GOLDEN AGE MUSICALS: Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Oriental” Musicals................ 39
The King and I (1951)..............................................................................................................41
Flower Drum Song (1958 and 2002)....................................................................................... 43
THE LEGACY, IMPACT, AND INFLUENCE OF MISS SAIGON.......................................49
CHAPTER THREE: CASTING AND NEW ASIAN CANADIAN MUSICAL THEATRE.......60
CASTING TERMS AND PRACTICES........................................................................................ 61
Next to Normal (Musical Stage Co, Toronto, 2019)................................................................ 63
ASIANS IN HISTORICALLY WHITE ROLES........................................................................... 68
Asian Ariel in The Little Mermaid...........................................................................................69
Asian Mixed-Race Anne Shirley in Anne of Green Gables: The Musical.............................. 72
NEW ASIAN CANADIAN MUSICAL THEATRE......................................................................77
Soft Magical Tofu Boys........................................................................................................... 77
MEAT.......................................................................................................................................84
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................... 93
Works Cited.........................................................................................................................................98
vi
Acknowledgements
My biggest thank yous to:
Dr. Olivia Michiko Gagnon for being my advisor through my entire graduate program. Thank
you for keeping me on task and guiding me through all the challenges I faced writing this
thesis.
Dr. Siyuan Liu for coming onboard for the final stretch of this project and for being my
second reader.
My MA Theatre Studies peer/accomplice/friend, Kayla McIntyre, for being a sounding board
and someone with whom I could share the challenges (and memes) of writing a Master’s
thesis.
My interviewees, Aaron Jan, Damon Bradley Jang, Genny Sermonia, Julio Fuentes, Kelsey
Verzotti, Kevin Wong, Kimberly-Ann Truong, Nam Nguyen, Rosie Simon, and Stephanie Sy,
for your time and openness in sharing your stories. You all inspire me as an academic and as
an artist. I am so grateful for your contributions and participation in this project. I am able to
imagine new representations and possibilities for Asianness in musical theatre with and
because of all of you.
Adam White for showing me the possibility of musical theatre academia, and being an
inspiration to keep doing the difficult work.
UBC Faculty of Arts for their generous Graduate Award funding, and UBC and Professor
Errol Durbach for the Errol Durbach Graduate Scholarship in Theatre Award.
To all my friends, colleagues, and fellow artists (too many to name) who have genuinely
asked me how my thesis is going and continuously encouraged me through the process.
Finally, thank you to my family for supporting my massive, silly, important dreams of the
arts, musical theatre performance, and musical theatre academia. Thank you for instilling and
encouraging our culture in ways that have allowed me to love my Chinese Canadianness.
viii
INTRODUCTION
During my undergraduate degree at Sheridan College, I learned about the history and
legacy of musical theatre: from notable writers like Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hammerstein,
and Stephen Sondheim, to forms and tropes like the “I Want” song—which expresses the
protagonist’s objective for the musical—and the foils of primary romantic couples and
secondary comedic couples. This history rarely included artists that looked like me or stories
that reflected my lived experience as a second-generation Chinese Canadian. As such, I
found myself asking how (or if) I fit into the past, present, and future of musical theatre. I
had heard about a few popular Asian shows within the canon of musical theatre––namely The
Mikado and Flower Drum Song––but these were mostly deemed stereotypical and offensive
by Asian performers and audiences. As I studied these musicals, my undergraduate task
became to uncover how and why Asians have been depicted in particularly comedic and
restrictive ways, while white actors and characters have been afforded the privilege of being
heroes, villains, and romantic leads. I was also interested in what other representations and
musicals might exist––albeit overlooked––both on Broadway and in contemporary musical
theatre, including works in development. These initial questions animated my undergraduate
research and became the seeds that ultimately grew into this thesis project.
Thinking across a vast period from the 1830s to the present day, this thesis explores
how representations of Asianness in North American musical theatre have evolved from
relatively homogenous orientalist constructions to heterogenous stories and roles grounded in
diverse Asian American/Canadian experiences. Through a historical focus on periods (and
aftermaths) of Asian immigration to the United States and Canada, this thesis begins by
tracing the emergence of figures like the China Doll, the Chinese Coolie, the Model Minority,
and the Dragon Lady. Moving through these transnational histories of (primarily East and
Southeast) Asians, I track the dynamic interplay between historical events and the creation of
Asian stereotypes, as well as between various stages and the social worlds within which they
are embedded. I subsequently explore how these stereotypes have emerged and been
negotiated in North American musical theatre from the 1930s to the present day––too often
circumscribing Asian musical theatre artists within portrayals of foreign “otherness”
characterized by offensively comedic Asian accents or silently obedient background roles. I
ultimately argue that while early representations of Asianness in North American musical
1
theatre created an enduring and limited image of the Asian grounded in historical stereotypes,
contemporary musical theatre has sought to respond by working to expand the possibilities
for Asian representation as grounded in multiplicity.
Interdisciplinary in scope, this thesis draws from the fields of theatre and performance
studies, Asian American and Asian Canadian studies, critical race studies, and gender and
sexuality studies. Primarily, I look to Homi Bhabha—and Coco Fusco and Karen
Shimakawa’s writing on/with Bhabha—to understand how stereotypes emerge through
repetition. I work with Edward Said’s concept of Orientalism and Anne Anlin Cheng’s theory
of ornamentalism in order to make sense of how Asian stereotypes function both in society
and on-stage, as well as how Asian bodies sometimes transit between subject and object.
Lastly, I lean on José Esteban Muñoz’s theory of disidentifications in order to examine how
stereotypes are reclaimed and/or problematized by Asian artists. While disidentifications is a
queer of colour theory that exposes and emerges from a double exclusion via
sexuality/gender identity and ethnicity/race, I find it useful in my analysis of Asianness in
musical theatre despite an often single exclusion based on race. My hybrid methodology
brings together this mobilization of critical theory alongside historical research; close
readings of play-texts, archival footage, and production reviews; and ten interviews that I
conducted with Asian Canadian musical theatre artists, ranging from performers to creative
team members.
Musical theatre, or “American musical theatre”—specific in its form, location
(Broadway and New York as the art form’s capital), and emergence from/as American pop
culture—is relatively young. Although musical theatre draws from previous theatrical forms
such as Greek theatre, opera, and vaudeville, the fundamental description of musical theatre
is theatre that uses music, dance, and dialogue to tell a specific and cohesive story.1 Musical
theatre generally requires the entire cast to perform all three disciplines (singing, acting,
dancing), while opera employs distinct singers and dancers who perform their one discipline.
Many musical theatre historians name 1866’s The Black Crook as the first musical (Hurwitz
35) due to song and dance being required of the principal actors. Within considerations of
musical theatre, there has been limited scholarship specifically on Asianness in North
1 Nathan Hurwitz follows the legacy of these forms and how they have influenced and evolved into musical
theatre in his book A History of the American Musical Theatre: No Business Like It.
2
American musical theatre. Thus, my work sits alongside scholars who work on Asianness in
North American theatre, performance, and musical theatre, such as Eury Colin Chang,
SanSan Kwan, Hye Won Kim, and Colleen Kim Daniher. Moreover, one of the main scholars
who has written on Asianness in North American Musical Theatre is Donatella Galella. With
her articles “Feeling Yellow: Responding to Contemporary Yellowface in Musical
Performance” and “Democracy, ‘Democracy (Reprise),’ and the Asian American
Ambivalence of Soft Power,” Dr. Galella’s work has animated my own through her
navigation of multiple disciplines, and her focus on both traditional and developing musical
theatre. By highlighting specific Asian North American histories and works––including new
ones in development––this thesis aims to contribute to scholarship on theatre, musical
theatre, and Asianness in North American theatre while also highlighting Asian North
American histories and documenting new Asian Canadian works. In working transnationally
across the United States and Canada, my work explores the relationship between history and
musical theatre in Canada and the U.S. that has not often been thoroughly investigated.
Thinking beyond academia––and as a practitioner and community member––I aim to
position my work as a vehicle that can impact both musical theatre creation and education,
with a specific focus on how Asian experiences are represented. This, in turn, informs how
Asian performers are able to participate in the industry, as well as how Asians are perceived
in broader society.
In this thesis, I move flexibly between the United States and Canada because of their
entangled yet distinct histories. Due to this, I often use the terms “Asian American/Canadian”
and “Asian North American” interchangeably. I employ the term “Asian North American”
following Eleanor Ty and Donald C. Goellnicht in Asian North American Identities: Beyond
the Hyphen. As they write:
We strongly believe that there are still strategic advantages to be gained by such
coalition building and common identification—we propose that “Asian North
American” is a more useful umbrella term because Asian subjects who reside in the
United States and in Canada face many of the same issues regarding identity, multiple
cultural allegiances, marginalization vis-à-vis mainstream society, historical
exclusion, and postcolonial and/or diasporic and/or transnational subjectivity. “Asian
North American” should be employed, however, with the proviso that both the
3
national differences between the U.S. and Canada and the significant heterogeneity
within the purview of the term are acknowledged and explored. (2)
I believe that employing a coalitional term and identity is useful in provisionally unifying
Asians within the white-dominated musical theatre industry in both the U.S. and Canada,
especially given our shared experiences of oppression. That said, while many Asian
experiences are shared across cultural groups and across the U.S. and Canada, there are still
differences amongst these groups. Maintaining this understanding that differences still exist,
is a necessary ethical texture of coalitional thinking that Ty and Goellnicht also note.
Moreover, while it is impossible to discuss musical theatre without discussing the
U.S––specifically Broadway––I have also focused on highlighting the Canadian industry
where my experiences and participation are grounded. Lastly, I acknowledge that while my
thesis focuses primarily on East and Southeast Asian representations, representations of
South Asians in musical theatre are present in shows like Bombay Dreams and Bend It Like
Beckham: The Musical.
In terms of the thesis’s structure, Chapter One lays the historical and theoretical
framework for the entire thesis, and investigates representations of Asianness in early
performance forms. Moving deftly from the 1830s to the 1960s, I unfold transnational
histories of (primarily East) Asian immigration, exclusion, and labor in order to trace the
origins of Asian stereotypes in North America. I unpack theories of stereotyping,
Orientalism, and ornamentalism in order to make sense of how Asian bodies in North
America have been framed as China Dolls, Chinese Coolies, Model Minorities, and Dragon
Ladies. Analyzing practices of yellowface, human display, and the Chop Suey Circuit
(1930s-1950s), I investigate representations of Asianness in performance prior to the
emergence of musical theatre as we know it today.
Chapter Two analyzes how these (now-historicized) Asian stereotypes have been both
perpetuated and challenged in commercial Broadway musicals from the 1930s to 2017. I
focus on five musicals across three eras as pertinent case studies. The first musicals I analyze
are Anything Goes and On The Town––in an era I call the “Early Musicals” from the 1930s to
the 1940s. The next musicals I analyze are The King and I and Flower Drum Song. These
take place during the “Golden Age”––an era scholars have argued changed the form of
American musical theatre with its turn to the proper integration of music, acting, and dance,
4
as well as the newly required specificity of story. The final musical I analyze in this chapter
is Miss Saigon, which serves as both a bridge to, and major influence on, the contemporary
musical theatre works discussed in Chapter Three. In examining these musicals through the
context of Asian North American histories, I illustrate how the echoes of historical
stereotypes and harmful performance practices have reverberated on Broadway across time.
Chapter Three turns its attention more locally toward musical theatre in Canada, with
a dual focus on the casting of Asian performers in historically white roles and Asian
representations in new/developing Asian Canadian musicals. In both instances, I argue that
representations of Asianness are expanded beyond stereotypes as actors are able to tell a
wider breadth of experience through “non-traditional” casting and stories written by Asian
Canadians. First, I explore practices of “non-traditional” casting through a consideration of
the Black-Asian mixed-race family in Musical Stage Company’s production of Next to
Normal in Toronto. I argue that this production opened up conversations about Asianness and
mental health, as well as challenged depictions of Asians as unfeeling. I then turn to Asian
performers cast in “default white” roles through the casting of Stephanie Sy as Ariel in The
Little Mermaid in Regina and Kelsey Verzotti as Anne Shirley in Anne of Green Gables: the
Musical in Charlottetown. Looking at Sy as Ariel in The Little Mermaid, I argue that when
Asian performers take on historically white roles, they are able to portray a variety of stories
that have historically only been told by white performers. Through a consideration of Verzotti
as Anne in Anne of Green Gables, I argue that a half-Chinese, mixed-race Anne highlights an
overlooked history of Chinese people on Prince Edward Island. I end this chapter by looking
at two new Asian Canadian musicals: Kevin Wong’s Soft Magical Tofu Boys and Aaron Jan
and Alaska B’s MEAT. I argue that both provide heterogeneous perspectives that contribute to
the representation of Asian experiences grounded in multiplicity. To demonstrate this, I
examine how they deal with the Model Minority Myth and Asian femininity, respectively, in
ways that confront harmful Asian representation in musicals written by white writers.
In the conclusion chapter, I provide a brief historical summary of Asians in North
America, how stereotypes have emerged from these histories, and how Asian representations
in musical theatre have evolved. I draw on additional interview excerpts from the interviews
I conducted with Asian Canadian musical theatre artists to highlight their observations on
this evolution. I note which other Asian musicals––both U.S. (Broadway and
5
independent/developing) and Canadian––could be sites of analysis in future iterations of this
work.
Ultimately, this thesis insists upon the importance of unfolding the historical contexts
that frame––and too often circumscribe––Asians in North America on and off stage. It argues
that this historical perspective is crucial for understanding the emergence of stereotypes, as
well as how to subvert, build upon, and evolve away from them and toward more expansive,
heterogenous, and life-giving renderings. By documenting a North American history of
Asianness on and off stage, my focus has been on what and who has paved the way for
present-day Asian artists to write their “weird, whimsical, specific things” (K. Wong), as well
as for performers like me to embody those writings in ways that much white musical theatre
has suppressed. Through advocating for more inclusive and diverse representations of
Asianness in North American musical theatre, I have sought to highlight what becomes
possible when Asian bodies are empowered and “welcomed to the table” (Syler and Banks).
6
CHAPTER ONE: HISTORICIZING STEREOTYPES
Stereotypes have too often confined Asians to unemotional and functional roles
within North American society, and have consequently created a monolithic vision of
Asianness in musical theatre. In this chapter, I investigate the roles that Asian––primarily
East Asians and Southeast Asians––inhabited when they first came to the United States and
Canada, as well as how these historical circumstances shaped the Asian stereotypes that I
regularly observe in contemporary American musical theatre. Historicizing these stereotypes,
I trace the dynamic connections between theatre and its social milieus, largely because what
we see on stage can dramatically influence both how we think about the world and the way
we move through it; and what appears on stage is, in turn, influenced by what happens in the
social realm.
Theories of Stereotyping and Orientalism
In this chapter, I use theories of stereotyping and Orientalism to make sense of the
persistence of Asian stereotypes. To theorize stereotyping and its function, I look to Homi
Bhabha via Karen Shimakawa and Coco Fusco. Bhabha describes stereotyping as a
“necessary component of colonialist discourse, as it justifies domination and masks the
colonizer's fear of the inability to always already know the Other” (qtd in Fusco 153).
Stereotypes are ways in which colonization and the dominant (white) culture remain in
power and therefore requires “’fixity’ in the ideological construction of otherness” (qtd in
Shimakawa 15). As Homi Bhabha explains: “Fixity, as the sign of cultural/historical/racial
difference in the discourse of colonialism, is a paradoxical mode of representation: it
connotes rigidity and an unchanging order as well as disorder, degeneracy and daemonic
repetition” (qtd in Shimakawa 15). The way in which Asian stereotypes have come to be
established are through the “othering” of the Asian to the white American and/or European,
and later the separation from the African American.2 As Shimakawa states: “colonial
2 We can look to Claire Jean Kim’s theory of Racial Triangulation to understand how this separation functions.
“Racial Triangulation of Asian Americans” is often used to inform how we view the intersection and
relationships of Black people, white people, and Asian people in America. It frames these racial groups as
relational and dimensional instead of solely hierarchical—despite having societal and historical hierarchical
underpinnings. It is made up of two dimensions: the “superior/inferior” axis which is hierarchical, and “the
‘insider/foreigner’ axis [which] refers to the process of civic ostracism or to what extent a group is considered
to be unassimilable as opposed to being considered ‘insiders’” (Xu and Lee 1366). Racial triangulation finds
Asian Americans inferior to whites but superior to Blacks, and low ranking in terms of “civic acceptance”
making them perpetual foreigners and Model Minorities.
7
discourse functions, through the racial stereotype, to establish a self in opposition to an other
by making that other abnormal, monstrous, and thereby fixed and characterizable” (15). In
other words, stereotyping thrives on creating a distinction between the self and the
other-as-outsider.
I turn to the concept of Orientalism to analyze how Asianness is constructed in the
West. “Orientalism” is a term established in the 1970s by Edward Said in his book of the
same name. He defines Orientalism as “a way of coming to terms with the Orient that is
based on the Orient's special place in European Western experience” (Said 25). The concept
of Orientalism is how “European Western[ers]” view and understand the East/Asia as inferior
and in relation to themselves. Said notes that “the Orient is an integral part of European
material civilization and culture” (Said 25), a major element we will see intertwined and
expanded on through the concept of ornamentalism and the Asian understood through
objects. Orientalism creates the stereotypes around Asians as “a Western style for
dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient” (Said 27).
The Practice of Yellowface
Some of the questions animating my historicization of Asian stereotypes are: “when
and how were representations of Asianness introduced to North American society?” and
“when and how were actual Asian bodies introduced to American society?”3 As I will show,
the former sometimes preceded the latter. For example, in Compositional Subjects:
Enfiguring Asian/American Women, Laura Hyun Yi Kang points to the 1755 staging of
Voltaire’s The Orphan of China in Philadelphia as one of the first representations of
Chineseness on stage. This production was performed “long before sightings of the actual
Chinese” (Kang 116) and therefore was a white performance and construction of Asianness.
The play showcased “Orientalist caricatures” (Kang 116) which promoted an imagined
version of Chineseness to the United States.
This foreign, imagined, exoticized version of Chineseness embodied by white
performers is the well-known practice of yellowface which contains evident links to
Orientalism. In Made-Up Asians: Yellowface During the Exclusion Era, Esther Kim Lee
3 I focus on the United States because, historically, everything happened in the U.S. earlier than in Canada. I
also focus on the U.S. as a way to contextualize Broadway and the commercial musical theatre I analyze in
Chapter 2.
8
states that “yellowface can also be understood within the framework of Orientalism as a
visual representation of how the ‘Orient’ was imagined by the West” (6). Yellowface is
crucial for understanding how Asianness appears in performance spaces, as well as how
certain narratives of Asianness have been constructed. Yellowface, in essence, is the act of
playing Asian (or “yellow”) either through a non-Asian body inhabiting an Asian character
or through more explicit forms like prosthetics, makeup, and accents. Additionally, “one
essential characteristic of yellowface is its persistence; Asian American actors have been
protesting yellowface at least since the 1960s, yet yellowface continues to appear well into
the twenty-first century” (E. Lee 3). Throughout this thesis, I often speak of Asianness and its
status as an aesthetic to describe how actors, designers, and other artists employ stereotypical
visual markers or speech/movement patterns to portray Asia and Asianness. I use the word
aesthetic with a negative connotation because it has rendered Asians and Asianness
monolithic, two dimensional, and framed through visual markers with no regard for history
or meaning. Asia-as-aesthetic helps us understand how Asianness has become understood
through imagery like fans and dragons, or specific “Oriental” identifiers like almond shaped
eyes, black hair, and “yellowed” skin. When I speak of Asianness as an aesthetic, I
emphasize how this allows anyone to take on these stereotypical markers and claim
ownership over a variety of Asian cultures.
An illustrative example of yellowface is The Mikado. I often refer to this operetta in
the context of musical theatre as it is generally understood as a precursor to the American
musical. The Mikado is a comic operetta from 1885 with a libretto by W.S. Gilbert and music
by Sir Arthur Sullivan. Set in a fictionalized Japanese town named Titipu, The Mikado
imagines a generically Oriental (and subsequently ornamental and visually beautifully)
Asian/Japanese body and Japanese culture. By fictionalizing and promoting an imagined idea
of a real culture, Gilbert and Sullivan frame the East solely as gimmick: a site of unreal,
foreign “others,” where character names play on bathroom words and “funny” sounds, such
as Nanki Poo, Pooh-Bah, and Pish-Tush. The names themselves are not indicative of or
accurate to Japanese language or culture but may be read as how a white person might hear
and mock the Japanese language. As for yellowface costuming, in traditional, global
productions of Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Mikado, there is yellowface at every turn with all
white casts dressing up in kimonos and darkening their hair to appear Japanese for
9
entertainment and comedic purposes. Only in the last 10 years has there been an effort to
update and “reimagine” the operetta by setting it in non-Asian locations such as Victorian
England, or to even re-evaluate the programming of such a show.4 In the original 1885
London production of The Mikado, yellowface depicted “authoritative Japaneseness whose
appearance was defined by elaborate latex headpieces and wigs, heavy eye makeup, and
spectacular costumes, and whose gestural vocabulary included mincing steps, fluttering fans,
and exaggerated bowing” (Lee, The Japan of Pure Invention 67). In The Japan of Pure
Invention: Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado, Josephine Lee describes yellowface as more
than just costuming and aesthetic. Yellowface can also be defined by “the imitative and
performative mechanisms and actions [...]; how they act, rather than inhabit, a role” (Lee,
The Japan of Pure Invention 94). Yellowface thus also extends into the comportment and
movement of the actor/character.
In order to investigate the role and impact of setting this operetta in Asia, Anne Anlin
Cheng’s theory of ornamentalism is instructive. For Cheng:
Ornamentalism [is] a conceptual framework for approaching a history of racialized
person-making, not through biology but through synthetic inventions and
ornamentations. First, ornamentalism names the critically conjoined presences of the
Oriental and the ornamental. Second and more importantly, ornamentalism describes
the peculiar processes (legally, materially, imaginatively) whereby personhood is
named or conceived through ornamental gestures, which speak through the minute,
the sartorial, the prosthetic, and the decorative. [...] Orientalism is a critique,
ornamentalism a theory of being. (17-18)
Gilbert and Sullivan created characters and an Oriental world through “synthetic inventions
and ornamentations” and “the prosthetic and the decorative” (Cheng 17-18). Librettist W.S.
Gilbert has even said: “I cannot give you a good reason for our forthcoming piece being laid
in Japan. It has seemed to us that to lay the scene in Japan afforded scope for picturesque
treatment, scenery, and costume” (Lee, The Japan of Pure Invention 5). In this quotation,
4 In 2015, The New York Gilbert & Sullivan Players had a production of The Mikado planned for their
2015/2016 season that featured a company of mostly Caucasian actors playing Japanese characters. In
September 2015, the company cancelled their production due to protest from the Asian American community
(Gioia). Following that incident, there was an updated prologue developed by the New York Gilbert & Sullivan
Players in consultation with the Asian American arts community to be included in a new licensing of The
Mikado. In 2018, the Victoria Gilbert & Sullivan Society (VGSS) performed a “modernized version” of the
show set in Victorian England that included said updated prologue (CBC News).
10
Gilbert is explicit about their decision to choose Japan and Japanese culture solely for its
foreign imagery and decorative appeal. Additionally, The Mikado serves as a satire of British
society and politics, therefore setting it in a foreign land allows audiences to laugh at the
absurd “otherness” of the characters and their ways of governing. The decision to emphasize
this very real “otherness” with a fictionalized Japan perpetuates the idea that other people,
primarily white folks, can own, be, and laugh at Asianness as a means of entertainment. This
is dangerous as it frames Asians and Asianness as ornamental objects, therefore enabling
white supremacy, ownership, and dominance over the East.
ASIAN STEREOTYPES
The main stereotypes I historicize in this chapter are the China Doll, the Chinese
Coolie, the Model Minority, and the Dragon Lady. These stereotypes have followed Asian
bodies for decades and continue to be relevant in contemporary North American theatre,
media, and culture. While some of these stereotypes are Chinese-specific, these constructions
follow East Asian and Southeast Asian bodies as well, as evidenced in the musical theatre
shows that I analyze in subsequent chapters.5
The China Doll / Yellow Woman
In contemporary North American musical theatre, fantasies about Asian “exoticism”
might be productively thought of in relation to early representational modes of yellowface.
Additionally, the display of actual human bodies is a crucial factor to historicizing the China
Doll / “yellow woman” stereotype, in tandem with the theory of ornamentalism. In linking
the display of Asian bodies and ornamentalism to the China Doll, I track how the stereotype
was produced and continues to function as a harmful representational frame.
In Ornamentalism, Cheng notes Asiatic femininity as being deemed “an inherently
aesthetic object” therefore “the yellow woman calls for a theorization of persons and things
that considers a human ontology inextricable from synthetic extensions, art, and commodity”
(Cheng 2). Framing Asian female personhood as deeply linked to objecthood, Cheng writes
5 I focus on East and Southeast Asian representations, namely Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Thai,
and Filipino, as those are the communities that appear in musical theatre the most—whether through content or
through actors/artists. Additionally, my focus lies in how my own Chinese/East Asian body is perceived
therefore I look to the Asian communities that I know and identify with. While brownness plays into Filipino
identity, I do not look to brownface or representations of South Asians in musical theatre for this thesis.
11
of “the yellow woman emerg[ing] as a ‘body ornament’” (Cheng 2) and “persistently
sexualized yet barred from sexuality, simultaneously made and unmade by the aesthetic
project” (Cheng 4-5). Ornamentalism is thus a theory that helps make sense of the
fluctuations of subject-object distinctions with regards to Asian female bodies (Cheng 24).
Cheng describes the term “ornament” as “refer[ring] to the insignificant, the superfluous, the
merely decorative, the shallow, and the excessive” (Cheng 15). When thinking of the
“ornament” in regards to a body, one is confronted with what that means for a subject and
their personhood to be “insignificant” and “superfluous.” I use ornamentalism as a
framework for thinking about how representations of the Asian body, particularly the Asian
female body, have been created and positioned in Western/North American consciousness.
Through ornamentalism, I look at how the visual and the object have created a specific
understanding of the Asian. The China Doll/“Yellow Woman” is the picture of the Asian
female as an exotic object and aesthetic. She is diminutive, obedient, and an ornament for
Euro-American commerce and pleasure.
In historicizing the stereotype of the China Doll, I look to the history of Asian women
in the United States as ornamental due to their positions in the U.S. According to historian
Judy Yung, the first Chinese woman to immigrate to the U.S. was Maria Seise in 1854 (Kang
117).6 Seise worked as a domestic servant for American trader Charles V. Gillespie therefore
inhabiting the stereotypical role of the Asian servant/homemaker/domestic worker in North
America. As stated by Shimakawa and Bhabha, for a stereotype to be established, it must be
repeated. The role of the Chinese woman servant was already relevant in China, where
“prostitution and enslavement had a long history” (Chang 81). For families “on the brink of
starvation, [they] might sell their youngest daughter to keep the other members of the family
alive” (Chang 81); this was an “officially sanctioned” practice in the Qing dynasty. Pulling
from this history in the East, as well as Seise in North America, we can begin to see how the
stereotype of the China Doll emerges through the repeated appearance of Asian women as
objects trafficked and sold, and workers in service of another.
In performance, following Coco Fusco’s assertion that human exhibition and display
are “the origins of intercultural performance in the West” (Fusco 149), I turn to human
6 “According to historian Judy Yung, although Afong Moy is considered to be the first Chinese and the first
Asian woman to come to the United States, Maria Seise was the first Chinese woman to immigrate to the United
States in 1854” (Kang 117).
12
display of Asian bodies as an early performance form that reveals the Western idea of the
East “being in need of discipline, civilization, and industry” (Fusco 148). Specifically, I look
to Afong Moy and Pwan Yekoo as the first Asian––specifically Chinese ––women displayed
in the United States. Afong Moy is a figure often forgotten or ignored in American history.
Speaking with other Asian performers, they had not heard of Afong Moy until being asked to
work on a play about her life.7 As someone who has been looking into performers who have
paved the way for what I am able to do, I also had not come across Moy. As one of the first
Chinese women in the U.S., Moy arrived in New York in the fall of 1834 (Davis 11). In The
Chinese Lady: Afong Moy in Early America by Nancy E Davis, Moy is described as arriving
in Washington in 1835 and having “spent her time [there] principally performing her role as
an exotic personage from a distant land” (Davis 12). She is one of the first recorded examples
of ornamentalism, commodification, and fetishization of the Asian female body. As Davis
describes:
Though [Moy] was meeting the highest-ranking men of the country and was the first
Chinese person to visit with an American president, the young woman’s mission was
far from diplomatic. She did not carry greetings from China or represent the country
in any official capacity; her task, as assigned by the escorts who accompanied her,
was pecuniary. [...] Afong Moy had been caught in the web of Americans’
commercial activities, and now, in 1835, she was part of its valuable cargo. (11-12)
Moy is the prime example of the China Doll, both in a conceptual and literal sense as she was
referenced as “valuable cargo” (Davis 12), simply an object of monetary value and exchange
in America. Afong Moy was an object of display and commerce with Captain Obear, the man
who brought Moy from Canton, exhibiting her in the salon of his house on Park Place for
eight hours a day at the price of ½ dollar a visitor. Iris Chang of The Chinese in America
notes that Moy was sixteen years old and displayed in a “life-sized diorama [...] as if she
were a rare zoological specimen” (Chang 26), revealing “the once popular European and
North American practice of exhibiting indigenous people from Africa, Asia, and the
Americas in zoos, parks, taverns, museums, freak shows, and circuses” (Fusco 148). Moy
was not seen as human or anything other than a possession. It was normalized for racialized
bodies to be put on display and “othered” to the white American public. Fusco cites the
7 The Chinese Lady by Lloyd Suh—a play that actor Rosie Simon worked on at Crow’s Theatre in Toronto.
13
practice of human display as being originated by “Christopher Columbus, who returned from
his first voyage in 1493 with several Arawaks, one of whom was left on display at the
Spanish Court for two years” (Fusco 148). The exhibiting of Afong Moy’s body as object
falls into this history of racialized bodies being trafficked, displayed, and capitalized on by
Euro-Americans. In the United States, Asians were understood as a far-off exotic aesthetic
due to their only knowledge of the East being through illustrations like those found on tea
chests, chinaware, fans, or wallpaper. These images being their sole familiarity with Asians
facilitated Orientalism and the Western idea of Asia. Philip Hone, who acted as New York’s
cultural custodian, spoke of Afong Moy with the following statement: “Her appearance is
exactly the same as the figures on tea chests a large Head, small features and a countenance
devoid of expression” (Davis 52). This reflects the notion of being a literal China doll—an
inanimate object, “devoid of expression” and personhood. Due to her visual attributes being
the emphasis of her value to U.S. Americans, her function as ornamental is highlighted.
Similarly to Afong Moy, and perhaps even lesser known, is Pwan Yekoo. Pwan
Yekoo was displayed on tour as part of the Barnum Chinese Museum in 1850. She was the
star of P.T. Barnum’s “Living Chinese Family,” a show made up of six performers who
performed musical numbers and other acts—a precursor to vaudeville and musical theatre.
Pwan Yekoo was billed as a “genuine Chinese lady,” with a New York Times article from
April 21, 1850 describing her as “prepared to exhibit her charming self, her curious retinue,
and her fairy feet (only two and a half inches long), to an admiring and novelty-loving
public” (Kang 116). Focusing on these ideas of the visual aspects and observations of both
Moy and Pwan, it is important to note how these women’s bodies were spoken about. Moy’s
defining attributes being her “large head,” “small features,” and “monstrously small four-inch
long bound feet” (Chang 27), and Pwan’s attributes also being her “fairy feet” and the
“novelty” of her existence and appearance. There is an emphasis on the physical smallness of
these Chinese women, something that was admired by Americans as “other.” Additionally, I
will note that smallness in Chinese women has historically been praised and celebrated in
Chinese culture itself and is the reason for the act of footbinding—a Chinese custom of
breaking and binding young girls' feet to ensure they stay small. While one could argue that
Pwan Yekoo may hold a different type of agency than Moy because she performed musically
(she played the Pipa, which is something that would require skill and training), she was also
14
displayed as a “natural curiosity” for paying audiences. In “Daguerreotypes and Humbugs:
Pwan-Ye-Koo, Racial Science, and the Circulation of Ethnographic Images around 1850,”
Michelle Smiley notes that “Pwan-Ye-Koo’s whole known life remains accessible only
through scant records of these performances” and PT Barnum’s marketing and
commodification of the existence of these Chinese bodies. This means that Pwan Yekoo's life
is only documented and known through the performance and display of her Chineseness, as
opposed to who she was as a person or through her family lineage. Barnum and other
Americans were able to maintain the dehumanization of the Asian body through these
displays that capitalized on the “rarity of seeing Asians and Asian Americans in the United
States around 1850” (Smiley). Seeing these unknown “others” as objects and aesthetics
appealed to white Americans at the time. This subsequently created a strict hierarchy and “us
vs them” dynamic. Both Afong Moy and Pwan Yekoo, in their roles as China Dolls, are
examples of ornamentalism through their bodies, cultures, and exoticism being on violent
display for white patrons. These displays, in addition to the physical objects taken from Asia,
like vases and chests, inform how North America frames, views and interprets the Asian
body, primarily the Asian female body, as object. These events have thus historically
constructed and normalized the idea of Asianness––specifically, Asian femininity––as
inanimate, unfeeling, and inhuman: the Asian woman as China doll.
The Chinese Coolie
Thus far, I have looked at Asianness and its role as ornamental, as well as at one of
the main stereotypes attached to Asian female bodies, but what of the Asian male body? In
much contemporary Western pop culture, namely film and TV, the Asian male body has been
represented as desexualized and intelligent, laboring, or dominant and controlling.8 In her
book National Abjection, Karen Shimakawa, citing Richard Fung, notes that the
representation for Asian men in pop culture has been “consigned to one of two categories:
the egghead-wimp or… the kung-fu master/ninja/samurai. He is sometimes dangerous,
sometimes friendly, but almost always characterized by a desexualized Zen asceticism” (16).
8 See examples in Mr Yunioshi in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Long Duk Dong in Sixteen Candles, and any martial
arts/ninja/kung fu Asian.
15
In naming the differences between stereotypes assigned to Asian female and Asian
male bodies, I return to Cheng, who––while focusing on the Asian female body, also frames
the Asian male body as the “Chinese coolie”: “a male laboring body mythologized as
mechanical and therefore infinitely capable of enduring pain” (133). The history of the
Chinese laborer, or “coolie,” began in China with foreigners employing the word to refer to
“household help or menial Chinese laborers” (Chang 30). According to Iris Chang, “coolie”
comes from the Chinese term k’u-li which literally means “hard strength” (30). In the 1840s,
“European capitalists experienced labor shortages on colonial plantations in regions like
South America and the Caribbean” and therefore, “with the help of unscrupulous Chinese
recruiters,” began replacing “African slave labor with Asian slave labor” in human
trafficking schemes which later became known as the “coolie trade” (Chang 30).
North America developed a fascination with Chinese people when they began
arriving in the United States during the Gold Rush era of the 1850s. The Chinese were
attracted to America due to stories of the gold mines and American contractors in need of
young, able-bodied men. That said, in 1852 “the California state legislature enacted a Foreign
Miners’ Tax, which was aimed particularly at the Chinese miners” (Yung et al 2) as a means
of controlling and capitalizing on immigration. Despite the tax, many Chinese laborers
arrived and participated in the mining, later reaping “immense profits for mining
corporations” (Yung et al 2). Chinese laborers also worked on building the Pacific railroads
in the United States in the 1860s and Canada in the 1880s. In the United States, “12,000 to
14,000 Chinese, four of every five men hired by the Central Pacific, [worked] in all phases of
construction—leveling roadbeds, boring tunnels, blasting mountainsides, and laying tracks”
(Yung et al 3), highly dangerous work. No record was kept of the deaths in building the
railroad but “one newspaper reported that there must have been at least 1,200 deaths, based
on the 20,000 pounds of bones that were shipped back to China before the completion of the
railroad in 1869” (Yung et al 3). In Canada, the situation was similar. Between 1881 and
1884, an estimated 17,000 Chinese workers were brought in from the southern coast of China
to build the Canadian Pacific Railway that ran through the mountains of British Columbia
(Ng). These workers were paid a dollar a day and forced to pay for food and gear, while
white workers were paid $1.50 to $2.50 and were provided food and gear (“Building the
Railway”). The Chinese “were given the most dangerous tasks, such as handling the
16
explosive nitroglycerin used to break up solid rock” (“Building the Railway”). Due to the
poor living conditions, and the extremely dangerous and harsh work, hundreds of Chinese
railway workers “died from accidents, winter cold, illness and malnutrition” (“Building the
Railway”).
Despite the poor conditions, the Chinese had a reputation of having an excellent work
ethic. During the Gold Rush, American writers noted the Chinese as “wonderfully clean”
(Chang 39). Mark Twain specifically wrote the following: “They are quiet, peaceable,
tractable, free from drunkenness. A disorderly Chinaman is rare, and a lazy one does not
exist” (qtd in Chang 39). There are stories of seeing Chinese workers carry heavy loads
“gracefully, and not grunt a groan” (qtd in Chang 39), therefore building this historical image
of the laboring Asian body. While the image of a physically strong male body might at first
glance appear to be positive, it was in fact a dehumanization of the Asian male that
emphasized their lack of emotion or need for effort. Their physical strength was valued only
as evidence of their worth to America and their laboring function. They were, however,
ultimately disposable. Whereas the Asian female body existed as a beautifully visual object
(and later a deeply sexual one), the Asian male body existed as expendable labor. Roh,
Huang and Niu speak to this in the introduction chapter to Technologizing Orientalism, citing
the American Federation of Labor’s publication, Some Reasons for Chinese Exclusion, Meat
vs. Rice, American Manhood against Asiatic Coolieism: Which Shall Survive? (1902) which
argued that “the Chinese male body differed radically from the American male body” (Roh et
al 10) and could “withstand physical deprivations that American and European laborers could
not” (Roh et al 11). This argument was used as reasoning to claim that “the Chinese body
simply did not require the conditions of safety, sustenance, and shelter that bodies of
European descendents required” (Roh et al 11).
While dehumanizing to be a laboring “coolie” with no rights or personhood, Asians
were allowed into the country at the time. This freedom ended with the enactment of the
Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 in the United States and the 1923 Chinese Immigration Act
(or Chinese Exclusion Act) in Canada. Both of these acts followed the immense labor and
sacrifice the Chinese made in the gold mines and on the railroads. In 1924, the United States
implemented “the most comprehensive [act] in restricting Asian presence in the United
States” (Kang 130); this was the Immigration Act of 1924 which completely halted and
17
banned the immigration of “all aliens ineligible for citizenship” (Kang 130). Kang notes this
as a “significant shift from the denial of naturalization to a total ban on future Asian
immigration” (Kang 130). In addition to banning immigration, the Immigration Act of 1924
created “the racial category ‘Asian’ by conflating Japanese, Chinese, and Korean nationals
and barring them from legal integration into the American economy” (Steen et al 171). As for
Filipino migrants, the Tydings-McDuffie Act of 1935 made the Philippines an independent
state instead of an American territory. This Act in combination with the National Origins Act
of 1924, which was under the Immigration Act, subjected Filipinos to be grouped with the
other Asians who were banned from the United States, when prior to 1935 they had been
exempt from such measures. A shared history of exclusion is therefore part of what brings
different Asian ethnicities together.
For the Chinese in Canada specifically, prior to 1923, all Chinese immigrants were
forced to pay a head tax to get into the country. This began under the Chinese Immigration
Act of 1885. The tax began at $50 and rose all the way to $500 per person between 1885 and
1923. The intention of the head tax was to discourage and restrict the amount of Chinese
arriving in the country “after Chinese labour was no longer needed to build the Canadian
Pacific Railway” (Chan). This confirms the idea that the Chinese were only seen as cheap,
accessible labor in service of something and someone else. To be “no longer needed” is to be
no longer valuable to the settler colonial project. Chinese workers’ description as “quiet,
peaceable, patient, industrious and economical” (Chang 56) thus laid the historical
groundwork for stereotypes of Asians (in this case specifically the Chinese) as Chinese
coolies, but also as model minorities.
The Model Minority
The stereotype (or myth) of the Model Minority depicts Asians as a “successful”
minority group: one that is hardworking, unproblematic, educated, unemotional, and thrives
economically despite the discrimination and injustices they have faced. The term “Model
Minority” was coined by sociologist William Petersen in a 1966 New York Times Magazine
article entitled “Success Story, Japanese American Style” which spoke to the success and
“good citizenship” of Japanese Americans despite being faced with what he described as “the
18
most discrimination and the worst injustices” in America (qtd in Niiya).9 Petersen writes that
“the Japanese Americans are better than any other group in our society, including native-born
white” (qtd in Niiya). The stereotype of the Model Minority is dangerous because it
diminishes the impacts of racism, frames Asians as a monolith, and problematically contrasts
them with other immigrants and minorities. Scholar and history professor Ellen D. Wu
speaks to this, saying:
In the midst of the black freedom movement of the 1960s, numerous politicians and
academics and the mainstream media contrasted Chinese with African Americans.
They found it expedient to invoke Chinese “culture” to counter the demands of civil
rights and black power activists for substantive change.
Asian Americans were framed as resilient and successful in order to belittle African
American communities, pit racialized groups against one another, and uphold white
supremacy. In 1966, U.S. Assistant Secretary of Labor Daniel Patrick Moynihan claimed that
“matriarchy in black ‘culture’ was to blame for the ‘deterioration’ of African American
communities by pointing to the ‘enlightened family life’ of the relatively well-to-do Chinese”
(Wu). The Model Minority stereotype is therefore problematic because Asian Americans
were set up by white folks as a “model to emulate” (Uyematsu qtd in Wu), which in turn
stoked anti-blackness and preserved white control.
The appearance of Asians in North America additionally facilitated a new aspect to
incorporate into entertainment. Looking at early performance forms we can see how, while
mostly a practice of white performers, yellowface minstrelsy also expanded what Black
performers could do since Asians functioned as a different “other.” Yellowface minstrelsy
emerged from blackface minstrelsy “which blended infectious music, captivating dance, and
rollicking humor with cross-racial mockery,” which was enjoyed by white audiences (Lee,
Oriental, Black, and White 10). In the nineteenth century, the blackface minstrel show staged
“racial demarcation” and the “boundaries separating black and white American cultures [...]
9 “The article goes on to outline anti-Japanese agitation prior to the war, the wartime exclusion and
incarceration, Nisei military service, and briefly analyzes the Japanese American generations (Issei, Nisei, and
Kibei). As evidence of Japanese American success, he notes their higher educational attainment, lower crime
rate and longer life expectancy [...]. He largely attributes this success to Japanese cultural values such as a group
versus individual orientation and respect for authority stemming from ‘links to an alien culture’ and ‘[p]ride in
their heritage,’ specifically noting the lack of same with African Americans” (Niiya). This lays the groundwork
for how the Model Minority Myth pits racialized groups against each other, primarily Asian and Black
communities.
19
marked most vividly along the lines of property and sexuality” (Lott 23). In this way,
blackface minstrelsy worked to reify the notion that “slavery was amusing, right, and
natural” (Lott 23)––therefore upholding white supremacy and violence against Black bodies.
Eric Lott argues that blackface minstrelsy “arose from a white obsession with black (male)
bodies that underlies white racial dread [and] how precariously nineteenth-century white
people lived their own whiteness” (Lott 23-24). He then goes on to show how blackface
minstrelsy’s “simultaneous construction and transgression of racial boundaries” evidenced
white performers’ simultaneous violent disdain for and “strong white fascination with black
men and black culture” (Lott 25). While blackface minstrelsy was originally performed by
white performers, by the 1860s Black performers also appeared in blackface. This offered
them economic opportunities within a severely limited context, access to the stage and
entertainment industry, and a way of negotiating the relationship between exclusion and
inclusion.10 Through the incorporation of Asian stereotypes, yellowface minstrelsy became
“part of ongoing patterns of representation that allowed both white and African American
performers to take on both blackface and oriental roles” (Lee, Oriental, Black, and White 5).
It is said that “minstrelsy’s most exotic foreigners were the Asians” (Bean 93), and this
interest in the East, and specifically the “Japan craze” around 1853, was later incorporated by
African American minstrels such as Tommy Dilaward, also known as “Japanese Tommy.”
Additionally, this type of “cross-racial performance became a way for African American
performers to expand their range of available roles” (Lee, Oriental, Black, and White 17).
The introduction of Asianness therefore impacted Black performers in minstrelsy as the
incorporation of yellowface could provide a temporary shift in racial dynamics. Nevertheless,
many different racial power dynamics were at play through these various cross-racial
impersonations. In the context and afterlives of slavery, white performers in blackface
represented Black folks as inferior, fetishized, and comedic, while perpetuating a continued
sense of white ownership and theft. Black performers in blackface negotiated visibility, a
10 As Fath Ruffins notes: “In that enslaved society, humor becomes a way in which people can define their class
position. There's a way in which they can mark who is included and who is not. African Americans come to be
excluded from certain aspects of American society. And blackface minstrelsy, in a very interesting way, moves
back and forth over these lines. It's not just done by whites to parody blacks. That is part of it, but it's also done
by people of African descent. It's done in ways in which people say, ‘This is authentic. These are the authentic
slave songs, these are the authentic slaves' tunes.’ It's a way for people to negotiate or to think about or to find
humor in an extremely problematic aspect of American society, which they are arguing about in their politics
and in government and in other ways” (“Blackface Minstrelsy.” PBS).
20
certain reclaiming of racist narratives, and a participation within American pop culture.
Meanwhile, Black performers in yellowface explored a different role and racial archetype.
For white performers, the introduction of Asianness did little to change power dynamics as
yellowface and blackface minstrelsy both function as modes of upholding white supremacy
and fantasies of non-white inferiority. That said, due to the history of slavery, white
performances of blackface highlighted the violences of ownership, property, and theft in
ways that were distinct from yellowface performances.
Yellowface minstrel performances in New York were often based on Asians as
workers—coming from a pattern of Asian immigrants owning laundromats and restaurants,
which feeds into the stereotype of the Model Minority. In Oriental, Black, and White,
Josephine Lee writes a chapter about the Chinese Laundry Sketch and how “the many
incarnations of [it] ridiculed the Chinese immigrant for his garbled speech, alien appearance,
and strange customs as well as for the unmanly labor of washing clothes” (101). The addition
and emphasis of the Chinese as laundry workers contributes to the role of the Chinese coolie
in that they are providing a service and the physical labor of washing. The desexualization of
the Chinese man appears in this sketch as his work of washing clothes is deemed a
woman’s––or an “unmanly”––task, therefore attributing a negative femininity to the Chinese
body. These laundry sketches “also expressed concerns about what happens in the absence of
white masters and overseers” (Lee, Oriental, Black, and White 101). No longer solely
emphasizing “the comic nature of low-wage servitude or the tricky servant’s ineptitude;
rather, they highlighted what problems might ensue when cunning Chinese immigrant
characters deployed perceptions of their own unintelligibility toward self-serving and devious
ends” (Lee, Oriental, Black, and White 101). The Chinese are simultaneously seen as
effective cheap laborers that the country can take advantage of, while also being a threat to
the country’s white labor and citizenship.
The constructions of the Chinese Coolie and the Model Minority continue to be
relevant in how Asians are viewed in society and media, and what is expected of us. These
stereotypes do not allow for Asians to make mistakes, fail, or be rebellious. Additionally,
they maintain the Asian as a perpetual foreigner. The historical circumstances described thus
far provide critical context for understanding both on-stage representations of Asianness in
musical theatre and the expectations placed on Asian artists within musical theatre.
21
THE CHOP SUEY CIRCUIT
As a framework to investigate how the final stereotype of the Dragon Lady functions,
I look to the Chop Suey Circuit. The Chop Suey Circuit spanned the 1930s-1950s, and was a
series of vaudeville-type nightclubs with “all-Chinese floor shows” (Kamiya).11 Their
performances often took on a risqué tone presenting dance, music, burlesque, and comedy
acts. The Chop Suey Circuit is an underemphasized but deeply important site for thinking
about the history of Asian representation in North American performance. Looking at the
Chop Suey Circuit, I examine how Asian performers both perpetuated and subverted the
limiting stereotypes ascribed to their bodies.
The Dragon Lady
Before I explore the Chop Suey Circuit in detail, I will first historicize the stereotype
of the Dragon Lady. In this chapter, I have looked at the stereotype of the submissive,
decorative Asian female, but the stark opposite also exists alongside it. Often called the
Dragon Lady, this primarily East Asian, but sometimes South and Southeast Asian,
stereotype evidences the oversexualization and fetishization of the Asian woman. The
Dragon Lady is strong, deceitful, mysterious, and sexual. This can be traced back to the
documented notion, and stereotypical assumption, that many (or all) Chinese women were
prostitutes. “In 1870, among the 3,536 adult Chinese women in California, there were
approximately 2,157 whose occupation were listed as prostitutes” (Kang 118). While
prostitution and enslavement “had a long history in China” (Chang 81), there is a history of
human trafficking of Chinese women to the U.S. as well, primarily by Chinese gangs/secret
societies beginning in the 1850s.12 These women were often trafficked to the United States
through men enticing and deceiving them with the promise of a better life in America. An
example of this is Wong Ah So, a nineteen-year-old girl who “agreed to emigrate when a
stranger posing as a rich laundryman offered to take her to Gold Mountain as his bride”
12 In speaking to the history of prostitution and enslavement in China, I refer to how poor Chinese families “on
the brink of starvation” would sell their daughters to keep the family alive (Chang 81). “The Qing dynasty
officially sanctioned the practice, noting that the survival of one in ten families depended on daughters being
prostituted” (Chang 81). Some children served as “indentured servants” for other families, and others would be
sold into brothels (Chang 81).
11 The phrase “Chop Suey” is in reference to the American dish, which is Chinese in origin but was created in
America as an Americanized version of Chinese food.
22
(Chang 82). Chinese women were brought and trafficked to the United States “to fill the
demand for prostitutes by Chinese labourers as well as by whites. In early 1854, one
company imported 600 female prostitutes to San Francisco” (E. Wong). Immigration laws
were then constructed to keep Asian women out of the country for fear of their corruption as
sex workers to white men. This indicates the desire to uphold a white supremacist United
States and the fear of interracial relationships. Not all women who arrived in the United
States in the mid to late 1800s were trafficked, instead some were able to be brought over by
their husbands. These women’s lives, in accordance with what was the norm in China,
centered on the family. Due to the little amounts of money the men were making as laborers
in North America, “the average worker could not afford to support a family in the United
States [therefore] most Chinese women emigrants who were not prostitutes were wives of
merchants” (Chang 89).
In the Chop Suey Circuit of the 1930s, the stereotype of the Dragon Lady resulted in
performances of exotic and erotic Asian femininity, which were a selling point for the
nightclubs. In particular, white audiences were attracted to Noel Toy aka the “Bubble Girl.”
Her act was a burlesque striptease where she would walk around naked holding only a beach
ball or bubble to cover herself. Arthur Dong, the creator of Forbidden City, USA (a 1989
documentary) says: “Male patrons flocked to the club to see a naked Chinese woman
perform, eager to confirm the perverse rumors about the genital differences between Asian
and white women. It was an unsavory cocktail of racism and sexism, but it was also
lucrative. Business soared” (qtd in Kamiya). The “perverse rumors” being the myth that
Asian female genitalia opened sideways, which was a rumor that circulated as early as the
1850s due to the sex trafficking of Chinese women at the time.
Through the historicization of Asian women as sex workers and the influence this had
on the view of Asian women, we can see how the stereotype of the oversexualized, fetishized
Asian female emerges. That said, the Chop Suey Circuit was also a place where performers
would challenge these stereotypes.
The Chop Suey Circuit
Despite its popularity, the Chop Suey Circuit has often been overlooked in North
American entertainment and Asian American history. Dong expresses the possibility of why
23
this has occurred by noting that “the whole notion of women wearing scanty clothing,
showing their legs in public was taboo for the conservative Chinese community at that time.
So I think the Chinese community, by and large, really wanted to forget about these clubs
because they weren't proud of it” (H. Chang). Nevertheless, there is ample documentation
that can be used to recount this history and create a picture of early Asian American
performers that both adhered to and subverted stereotypes.
The first, and most popular, Chinese nightclub of this era was the Forbidden City in
San Francisco. The club was owned, opened, and emceed by American-born Chinese man
Charlie Low. Despite being billed as “all-Chinese” shows, in reality, the performers were not
exclusively Chinese. Many were actually of Japanese descent and would take on Chinese
stage names in order to perform in the Chop Suey Circuit, as well as to avoid Japanese
internment at the time of World War II. The Japanese internment camps were government
organized sites in Canada and the United States that forcibly incarcerated Japanese and
Japanese-Americans/Canadians after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. The Japanese attack
on the U.S. naval base led the American and Canadian governments to believe that all
Japanese, whether foreign born or of American/Canadian citizenship, were threats. At this
time, “Japanese American performers capitalized on Americans’ ignorant perception that all
East Asians ‘looked alike’” (Kwan 131) and therefore allowed the Japanese to be combined
into the “general notion of Chineseness” (Kwan 126). Passing as Chinese was beneficial for
them to maintain their lives since being forced into these internment camps meant losing
their property, their business, and any financial stability they may have had. This casting and
integration of the Japanese into other Asian ethnicities is a pattern that is seen again and
again in musical theatre across time.
The Chop Suey Circuit is a site that I make sense of through José Esteban Muñoz’s
theory of disidentification. Muñoz describes the strict, limited binary of identifying or
counteridentifying to then propose disidentification as a third option. To disidentify is to
neither fully accept and reify the stereotype nor is it to completely reject it. Disidentification
is a generative and often strategic middle ground in which one “works on, with, and against”
stereotypes in service of minoritarian survival and/or to make a statement about those
stereotypes (Muñoz “Introduction”). For example, The Chop Suey Circuit’s vaudeville
nightclubs contained shows and acts that were displays of constructed Orientalism to appeal
24
to audiences of white tourists and military people. The performers would “fake accents,
adopt Chinese-sounding names, and wear coolie hats” (Kwan 122), therefore embodying the
Orientalism expected of them. Additionally, they would perform Western/American
nightclub acts like burlesque style stripteases, comedy sets, and American musical theatre
performances. This variation of acts therefore made these Asian American performers
uncategorizable as one distinct “identity” between Asian or American. The music performed
was generally the popular music and Broadway tunes of the time therefore asserting their
Americanness as Asian Americans. The dance acts that appeared in these clubs also did the
work of disidentifying as they included both traditional Chinese dance styles like the “Fan
Dance” and “Chinese Sleeve Dance” (Kwan 122), as well as American style numbers
involving tap dancing to Oklahoma!’s “The Surrey with the Fringe on Top” (Kwan 122), and
doing the Charleston and the shim sham. Chinese performers intrigued and appealed to white
audiences because of their ability to be “simultaneously recognizable and foreign” (Kwan
122).
Although the Asian performers within the nightclubs were asserting themselves as
both Asian and American, the options for these Chop Suey Circuit performers remained
limited. They were either the “erotic exotic or the ‘honorary’, if bogus, white” (Kwan 134).
That said, some of the famous performers and icons of the Chop Suey Circuit did break away
and/or challenge the Asian stereotypes of the time. These performers include Dorothy Toy
and Paul Wing who were one of the most popular all-Asian acts of the period. They were
often referred to as the “Chinese Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers” (Guillermo), although
stylistically their dancing was not very similar to Astaire and Rogers. Wing’s style was
Legomania (a dance style that focused on wiggly and wacky leg movements), while Toy
describes her own style as “strong, athletic toe [dancing]” (Quan). Neither of these dance
styles were what was expected of Asian performers but proved to be appreciated through Toy
and Wing’s success. Another popular performer of the time was Jack Soo, a stand-up
comedian and singer referred to as the “Asian Bing Crosby”.13 He was the first
non-African-American to be signed to Motown Records in 1965. Challenging the stereotypes
13 Born Suzuki, Soo was a second generation Japanese American. He was interned at Tanforan Assembly Center
internment camp in South San Francisco in 1941 with his family, and took on the stage name “Jack Soo”
post-World War II. He was discovered by Gene Kelly for Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Flower Drum Song (both
the stage musical and the film) while performing at the Forbidden City in San Francisco.
25
surrounding Asian males, he was neither a physical laborer nor a kung fu/martial arts master,
but was instead seen and accepted as a charming singer. Finally, there was first generation
Chinese American dancer, singer, and comedian Jadin Wong.14 Billed as “the Oriental
chanteuse with a new slant on life” (W. Wong), Wong’s theme song was “I May Be Wong,
But I Think You're Beautiful” (W. Wong). Read through the lens of disidentification, Wong
leaned into the comedy of her Asianness but was simultaneously a defiant artist who
challenged the meek, Asian female stereotype expected of her. Once recalling an encounter
with a New York booker, she says: “A booker in the Catskills said, 'You're a dancer, you're a
woman and you're Chinese. It'll never work. If you're so funny, say something funny.' I told
him 'F*ck you!' and I got the job” (qtd in W. Wong). Wong could be categorized as a Dragon
Lady in her captivating beauty and defiant strength but goes on to subvert and disidentify
with this stereotype. In the above quoted interaction, she is not purposely deceitful or sexual,
but because of the connotations of strength at the time, she might well have been perceived
through the lens of the Dragon Lady.
By looking at the Asian American performance history of the Chop Suey Circuit, we
can further understand how stereotypes of Asianness circulated in popular entertainment, as
well as how Asian performers engaged with and challenged these stereotypes. It is also
interesting to note how Asian performers were often compared to white icons of the time
(Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Bing Crosby), therefore suggesting Asian bodies in
performance could only be understood in relation to whiteness or as an “Asian version” of a
white artist.
CONCLUSION
I have thus historicized the production of Asian stereotypes by carefully unfolding the
roles and positions that many Asians inhabited when they first came to the United States and
Canada. In doing so, I have also pointed to some of the earliest representations of Asianness
on various North American stages––contextualizing these amidst histories of Asian
immigration and labor––in order to make sense of how contemporary North American
14 As Wong came to the end of her performing career, she started Jadin Wong Management in 1970 in order to
represent talent of Asian American descent. Wong is the inspiration for the character of ex-actress turned talent
agent Madame Liang in David Henry Hwang’s 2002 revisal of Flower Drum Song.
26
musical theatre both presences and disrupts Asian stereotypes. My contention is that the
histories unfolded in this chapter continue to follow Asian bodies, both on and off stage. In
the musical theatre pieces that preoccupy the upcoming chapters, then, I attend to how
Asianness is continually constructed and reconstructed––variously as décor, labor,
disposable, or sexual––in relation to these histories of stereotyping, display, and subversion.
27
CHAPTER TWO: BROADWAY / COMMERCIAL MUSICAL THEATRE
Building on my historicization of Asian stereotypes in Chapter One, this chapter
analyzes how these tropes have been both perpetuated and challenged in commercial
Broadway musicals. Although I focus on musicals that premiered in the 1930s–1990s, I also
analyze some of their revivals in the late 1990s and 2000s in order to track the long-term
evolution of Asianness and its stereotypes on-stage. In doing so, I aim to illustrate the
pervasive historical underpinnings of many mainstream onstage representations of
Asianness––highlighting how they have impacted Asians as both performers and subjects
across time. The representations of Asianness that I look to in this chapter are ones that are
likely most familiar to readers and theatre-goers alike. As such, I posit that they have played
a major role in shaping the current musical theatre industry. I look to New York
City––specifically Broadway––as the site for commercial musical theatre because,
historically, New York City has been the “economic and cultural center of the U.S.” since the
industrial revolution of the mid 18th–19th century, therefore leading to a “surge of theater
construction and productions” (Hurwitz 20). Broadway has been a dominant signifier of
commercial musical theatre and a conventional measure for success and popularity. To many
artists and spectators, Broadway is understood as the ultimate mark of having “made it.”
Certainly, there is excellent theatre being created and presented outside of Broadway, but the
“Broadway musical” has become a symbol of New York City and a major tourist industry.15
Additionally, being on Broadway means being eligible for the Tony Awards, which
recognizes excellence in live Broadway theatre, and has become a historical marker of
achievement as well as a marketing tool to draw audiences to particular shows. As such, this
chapter uses close readings of the play texts, alongside an engagement with reviews,
scholarly articles, and original artist interviews, in order to examine how Broadway
productions and revivals of Anything Goes (1934), On The Town (1944), The King and I
(1951), Flower Drum Song (1958 and 2002), and Miss Saigon (1991 and 2017) have
represented Asianness on-stage.
15 According to The Broadway League, the 2018-2019 Broadway season “contributed $14.7 billion to the
economy of New York City and supported 96,900 jobs” (“The Broadway League Reveals ‘The Demographics
of the Broadway Audience’ for 2018-2019 Season”). Additionally, in that same season, “attendance reached an
all-time record high of 14.8 million admissions. Among these, 2.8 million international visitors attended a
Broadway show. This represents the highest number of attendances by tourists from outside the US in history”
(“The Broadway League Reveals ‘The Demographics of the Broadway Audience’ for 2018-2019 Season”).
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EARLY MUSICALS: Anything Goes (1934) and On The Town (1944)
I begin by focusing on representations of Asianness in 1934’s Anything Goes and
1944’s On The Town––two musicals that do not center Asianness but contain Asian
characters and/or actors. These two musicals are historically contemporaneous with the
popular Chop Suey Circuit of the 1930s–1950s, which contained (what were termed)
“all-Chinese” vaudeville-type nightclub shows. Representations of Asianness on Broadway
carry a different importance than the nightclub context of the Chop Suey Circuit, as
Broadway is a mainstream commercial theatre industry marketed to families and people from
all walks of life.16
Anything Goes (1934)
In Anything Goes, I argue that the use of yellowface within the world of the play
builds upon and reifies stereotypes of the coolie and Asian foreigner that emerged from the
Gold Rush era and the Chinese Laundry Sketch from vaudeville/minstrel shows.
Re-presenced in popular commercial theatre spaces, these historical stereotypes powerfully
perpetuated the dehumanization and perpetual foreign “otherness” of the play’s Chinese
characters.
Anything Goes (1934) has a book17 by Guy Bolton and P.G. Wodehouse, and music
and lyrics by Cole Porter. It premiered on Broadway on November 21, 1934 and ran for 420
performances. The official synopsis is articulated as follows:
Anything Goes is set aboard the ocean liner S. S. American, where nightclub
singer/evangelist Reno Sweeney is en route from New York to England. Her pal Billy
Crocker has stowed away to be near his love, Hope Harcourt, but the problem is Hope
is engaged to the wealthy Lord Evelyn Oakleigh. Joining this love triangle on board
the luxury liner are Public Enemy #13, Moonface Martin, and his sidekick-in-crime
Erma. With the help of some elaborate disguises, tap-dancing sailors and good
17 I use the term “book” as in the “book of a musical” in referring to the script of a musical. It refers to the
drama and the non-music parts of the musical: the dialogue, stage directions, storyline, etc.
16 While the Chop Suey Circuit was predominantly relevant on the West Coast, it was present in New York. Tom
Ball’s China Doll nightclub, opened in 1946, was modeled after the Chop Suey Circuit clubs in San Francisco.
The China Doll was located on 51st between Broadway and 7th Avenue.
29
old-fashioned blackmail, Reno and Martin join forces to help Billy in his quest to win
Hope’s heart. (“Anything Goes Story” Broadway.com)
Anything Goes is a musical comedy that pulls from vaudeville tropes (like disguises and
comedy duos) and privileges flashy musical numbers and catchy songs over a clearly defined
plot. Much of the humour in the musical comes from the “intervention of the peripheral
characters in the overarching trajectory of desire (wanting to see Billy and Hope united)”
(Burrows 334), which is how the two Chinese characters, Ching and Ling, as well as the use
of yellowface, come into play.
Ching and Ling—originally played by Asian American actors Richard Wang and
Charlie Fang—are Chinese Christian converts and gamblers who are nothing more than a
plot device and joke for the main white characters. Ching and Ling are introduced in Act 1,
Scene 2 in which they are paraded alongside the Bishop who boasts about his missionary
work in China. Often referred to collectively as “CHINESE” in place of their individual
character names in the 1936 libretto, Ching and Ling are framed as non-specific and
interchangeable. This interchangeability also means that their “Chineseness” can be put on as
a costume by the white characters in the play, highlighting their position as “other” and their
culture/ethnicity as merely material. When this happens, the white characters are accepted as
Chinese due to their costuming and stereotypical Chinese accents.
In the play, while Ching, Ling, Moon and Billy are in jail on the boat, Moon and Billy
challenge Ching and Ling to a game of strip poker because they need their Chinese
“disguises” to get out of jail early (the Chinese are being released before the Americans).
Moon and Billy are ultimately successful in winning the Chinese clothes, and dress up to
play out a scheme in which they make Sir Evelyn believe that he has impregnated a Chinese
girl he had an affair with. All of this ultimately forces Sir Evelyn to cancel the marriage and
ensures Billy gets to marry Hope. This act of racial imitation indicates Anything Goes’
reliance on yellowface as a means to produce racially-driven comedy. To this end, the
characters of Ching and Ling have no real character development; rather, they are simply a
means to facilitate yellowface on-stage. Theatre scholar Donatella Galella argues that “the
Chinese characters were really only there as dramaturgical tools for the yellowface to happen
later, and for that comedy to happen later” (Gallela in Asare). In a bootleg recording of the
1987 Broadway production on YouTube (uploaded by American Musical Theater Archives),
30
we witness an interaction between Moon (who is in jail with Billy) and Reno, in which Moon
says: “If only we were Chinese, they get out in an hour” (American Musical Theater
Archives 1:30:23), which leads to their scheme of strip poker. Later, when the non-Chinese
characters enter in yellowface––dressed in clothing stolen or “won” from Ching and
Ling––the stage directions note their clothing as “costumes”: “(RENO ENTERS in Chinese
costume)” (Bolton et al Act 2, Sc. 3). This reinforces the Western Orientalist narrative of the
Asian, specifically the Chinese, as an object and a disposable body. Orientalism works to
create an “Asian aesthetic,” meaning Asian cultures are merely visual as opposed to being
full of history and meaning. Orientalism frames the Asian as a costume that can be easily
replicated—whether that is the dragon motif or the koi fish, or the almond shaped eyes and
dark hair of many Asian people. This narrative thrives on the idea that anything can be pulled
from Asians and claimed, while the rest can be thrown away or dismissed. I think of this
disposability in the context of a history of (high risk) contributions from Asian workers to
North American settler colonial projects like the transcontinental railroad through the 1860s
(in the U.S.) and 1880s (in Canada), and their continued legal exclusion and denial of
personhood within the United States (the 1882 Exclusion Act) and Canada (the 1923
Exclusion Act).
In regards to Anything Goes, the inference we can make from Moon and Billy’s
“escape” from jail dressed as the Chinese characters is that they left Ching and Ling in jail,
with no regard for what that might mean for them as people of colour and foreigners on a
boat, since we do not see them again. Thus, it seems that their only function was to provide
(yellow) “costumes” for (white) disguise; they are subsequently discarded (left to rot in jail)
as soon as they are no longer valuable. Their disposability in this scenario, while not physical
labor, does involve an unequal exchange. The white characters receive everything that they
desire—their escape from jail and the pursuit of love—while the Chinese characters remain
trapped and helpless. Their disposability comes into play as they inhabit the Chinese coolie
stereotype in which they are “mechanical and therefore infinitely capable of enduring pain”
(Cheng 133) therefore their prolonged imprisonment is not seen as an issue. The Chinese are
not seen as equivalent to their emotional, compassionate white counterparts, and they are
instead pawns in the white characters’ game.
31
The following dialogue between Billy and Moon also highlights their opinions on the
foreign Chinese characters as uncivilized, lower class, and grounded in stereotype:
BILLY “Can you get me out of these clothes and into something civilized?”
[...]
MOON “Well, I wish you’d get me out of these clothes before I open up a laundry.”
(Act 2, Sc. 3)
The reference to Chinese laundromats speaks to the characters’ disdain for the laboring
immigrant body and history of the Chinese in America as service workers and physical
laborers as opposed to American professionals like lawyers or stock brokers. It also
emphasizes the higher social status of the white characters in comparison to the Chinese
characters, despite Moon being described as a “second-rate gangster” (Burrows). There is a
clear class distinction based on both profession and race.
In addition to the Chinese “costumes” and multiple uses of visual yellowface,
Anything Goes uses verbal yellowface, therefore reifying the Orientalist imaginaries of what
Asianness “sounds like,” which were born in the early 1800s and perpetuated in
vaudeville/minstrel shows like Cook and Stevens’ “No Check-ee, No Wash-ee.” As Galella
puts it, the “implicitly white” characters speak in a fake Chinese language such as Billy’s
“Sing-fat-Wu-Chang-Mo-” (Act 2, Sc 3), and imitate a Chinese accent by adding “ee” to
their English words, such as “Englishee,” “catchee,” and “sowee” (Act 2, Sc. 3). This
perpetuates the notion that “some people’s voices are thought to be ordinary, respectable
clothing and some people’s voices are thought to be costumes, funny garb from which
comedy is fashioned” (Asare). On Masi Asare’s podcast Voicing Across Distance, Asare and
Galella discuss the “way various accents deployed on the musical stage to convey racialized
identity are built on expectations of how certain people ‘should’ or ‘shouldn’t’ sound”
(Asare). The depiction of the Chinese characters, as well as the yellowface used by the white
characters, exemplifies this idea of how people “shouldn’t” sound—primarily seen in Ching
and Ling’s broken English, and the white characters’ (in yellowface) broken English, fake
Chinese language, and stereotypical Chinese accents. Within the world of the play, verbal
yellowface becomes a tool for comedic purposes, which according to the 1987 bootleg
recording, is very successful in this task as we can hear the audience laughing. An example
of this is one of the white characters in yellowface (Billy) introducing the other as “Woo
32
Chang Moon, father of Little Plum Blossom.”18 In response, the other yellowfaced white
character (Moon) makes a “woo-woo” sound with his mouth, which I can only describe as a
stereotypical martial arts sound, along with a martial arts looking gesture of circling his arms
and leg, to which the audience erupts in laughter (American Musical Theater Archives
1:37:16). The audience’s laughter serves as an indication to both writers and performers that
yellowface is a successful technique to engage audiences, while also letting past and current
Asian audiences and performers know that they are seen as the butt of a joke.
Due to the fact that these acts of racial imitation and verbal expressions of racism are
performed by the main characters––those who, as Bertolt Brecht, Susan Bennett and
Christopher Balme19 have argued, often end up serving as audience surrogates and sites of
identification––the majority white audiences of the original production would likely have
been encouraged to agree with these opinions and identify with these views about Asianness.
For example, the act of the white main characters calling the Chinese outfits “uncivilized”
and their own clothes “civilized” would likely have reified audiences' hierarchical belief that
whites were more human than the Chinese. Recall also that in 1934, the Chinese Exclusion
Act was still active in the U.S. and the Chinese were banned from entry and those already in
the U.S. were banned from becoming naturalized citizens. There is thus a kind of mimesis in
Anything Goes in which “all things represented on stage are regarded as imitations of reality”
(Balme 67). This means that the musical fortifies the notion that the Chinese––both in the
world of the play and in the real world––can be neither American citizens, nor full humans
worthy of dignity and respect.
While the 1987 Broadway revival at Lincoln Center maintained the yellowface plot
point and fake Chinese language, Ching and Ling’s character names were changed to Luke
and John. In more recent adaptations of Anything Goes, there have been significant changes
19 Susan Bennett looks at spectatorship and reader-response theory in her book Theatre Audiences, and cites
Brecht as saying: “The characters of these plays do not interact with the audience; their 'feelings, insights and
impulses ... are forced on us” (23). Balme builds on, and cites, these same theories and ideas in The Cambridge
Introduction to Theatre Studies noting: “Almost all eighteenth-century theorists insist on a high degree of
commensurability between the characters represented on stage and the spectators sitting in the audience. This is
both a question of social class and empathetic identification” (75).
18 Due to Anything Goes’ various iterations, it is difficult to find the exact librettos to confirm which characters
are speaking at this moment and what exactly they are saying. To my knowledge of these characters, their
motivations, their personalities, and the blurry bootleg of the 1987 Broadway production, I believe it is Billy
that says this and then Moon in the following response.
33
to the way that the Chinese characters are represented––particularly in the 2018 Arena Stage
production.20 Galella discusses this on Asare’s podcast:
Arena Stage did a production in 2018 with a multiracial cast, starring Corbin Bleu,
and they got permission to change some of the lines, and to give more agency to the
two Chinese characters. They cast them with Asian American actors, and I was
interested in...how are they going to handle the anti-Asian racism? They were very
aware of it—Molly Smith, the director—from the very beginning, asked for input
from the Asian American actors. Some of the changes included that the two Chinese
characters, John and Luke…they specifically spoke to each other with American
accents, but if they were talking to any other members of the crew on this ship, they
put on these “Chinese” accents. They're stowaways, and they're trying to adhere to the
expectations of them as Chinese Americans who are treated as perpetual foreigners.
[...] Then they have to deal with the yellowface that's still in the script. So what they
did is, first of all, there's some of the lines, like [...] “We come long way, travel far to
have big talk” that now becomes: “We have just completed an extensive peregrination
in order to confer most urgently with this English gentleman.” So they actually go in
this whole other direction of a formal diction for the characters to say. [There is this
new] comedy in the incongruous juxtaposition that you would not expect a Chinese
person to sound like, so that's funny...but that also has these racist implications on
what you think a Chinese person would sound like. (Gallela in Asare 27:40)
In this reframing of the Chinese characters, there is an enactment of what José Esteban
Muñoz theorizes as disidentifications: “Disidentification is the third mode of dealing with
dominant ideology, one that neither opts to assimilate within such a structure nor strictly
opposes it; rather, disidentification is a strategy that works on and against dominant
ideology” (11). It is a practice that works in the grey area. That said, there are limits around
what can be changed in the show’s libretto; therefore the artistic question becomes: how can
a production use the limitations, the yellowface, and the stereotypes to disrupt the prescribed
construction of Asianness––remaking and rewriting the dominant script (literally and
figuratively) from within? For example, the representations of Luke and John that Galella
20 Arena Stage is a regional theatre in Washington, DC, and is important because they have been an industry
pioneer in commissioning and presenting new works—many of which have continued to Broadway.
34
describes still live within a 1930s world shaped by stereotypes, but their subtle updating also
allows for a critical and contemporary subversion of those stereotypes.
On The Town (1944)
In a turn away from the standard of presenting Asian stereotypes on Broadway, On
The Town (1944) featured a “mixed-race dance chorus and starr[ed] a Japanese-American
ballet dancer named Sono Osato” (Oja “The Original Miss Turnstiles”) during World War
II––a political statement to put in front of a mostly white American audience. By featuring
Osato in the role of Ivy Smith, On The Town subverts expectations of the Asian as perpetual
foreigner, instead highlighting and entangling the in/visibility of the mixed-race Asian
American at a time of Japanese American socio-political turmoil in the years following the
bombing of Pearl Harbor and Japanese internment in North America.
On The Town premiered on Broadway on December 28, 1944 and ran for 462
performances. Based on the Jerome Robbins and Leonard Bernstein ballet Fancy Free, the
musical had book and lyrics by Adolph Green and Betty Comden, and music by Leonard
Bernstein. On The Town follows the journey of three American sailors on a 24-hour shore
leave in New York City. Sono Osato played the character of Ivy Smith who we see being
selected as “Miss Turnstiles”—“a beauty queen of the subway” (Oja “The Original Miss
Turnstiles”). In a production photo provided by Oja, the set backdrop titles and describes her
as “Exotic Ivy Smith”:
a home-loving type who loves to go out night-clubbing. Her heart belongs to the
Navy, but she loves the army. She’s not a Career Girl, but she’s studying singing and
ballet at Carnegie Hall and painting at the Museums. She is a frail and flower-like
girl—who’s a champion at polo, tennis and shotput. (Oja “The Original Miss
Turnstiles”)
Although she is described as “exotic,” she does not embody stereotypical forms of sexualized
Orientalism. She is instead a picture of beauty, skill, and even averageness as both a subway
rider and a New Yorker. In the libretto text, she is described as “beautiful, brilliant, average, a
typical New Yorker” and a “home-loving girl, but she loves high society’s whirl—she adores
the army, the navy as well, at poetry and polo she’s swell” (Comden et al Act 1, Scene
4)—all evident nods to American patriotism. While the explicit Asian racialization of Ivy
35
Smith does not appear in the show material itself, with Osato in the role and the language of
“exotic,” Orientalism may be read into Osato’s body with “exotic” meaning “other,” “Asian,”
and “non-white,” especially with that word having sexualized connotations around
Asianness.21 Additionally, Osato is described (in the visual text) as a “frail and flower-like
girl,” again drawing on the stereotype of the China Doll, and the historical obsession with the
physical smallness (but also behavioural smallness in the form of obedience) of the Asian
female. Osato’s Asianness and Otherness in the role of Ivy Smith is hinted at but
simultaneously disappeared, therefore highlighting her in/visibility as an Asian American.
In regards to her Asianness and its context within America at the time, World War II
had been ongoing since 1939 but specifically, “the U.S. Pacific Fleet had been stationed at
Pearl Harbor since April 1940” (“Pearl Harbor Attack”) which was on Oahu Island, Hawaii.
By mid-1941, the U.S. was fully supporting China, who was at war with Japan, and “the
Japanese believed that once the U.S. Pacific Fleet was neutralized, all of Southeast Asia
would be open for conquest” (“Pearl Harbor Attack: Facts”). On December 7, 1941, the
Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor which thrust the U.S. into a more active role in WWII. This
led to the U.S. government’s suspicion and fear of the threat of all Japanese, whether foreign
or American born, and therefore “President Roosevelt, as commander-in-chief, issued
Executive Order 9066 that resulted in the internment of Japanese Americans”
(“Japanese-American Incarceration during World War II”). This internment (incarceration)
pulled families out of their homes and caused them to lose all property, businesses, and most
of their personal possessions. Despite many Japanese being American born citizens, they
were seen as a threat and “other” by the U.S. government. At this time, Osato’s father was
arrested as an “alien enemy” in Chicago and detained in Fort Sheridan, Illinois (Oja, “A
Japanese American Star During World War II” 131). Through her connection to her father,
Osato’s Asianness might be read as a possible site of foreign threat; however, her
mixed-raceness seems to have afforded her a degree of protective invisibility. When dancing
with the American Ballet Theatre, she had changed her name to Sono Fitzpatrick, taking on
her Irish and French-Canadian mother’s maiden name, and was not taken during the Japanese
internment in America. This tension––between visibility and invisibility––is amplified when
21 Like ideas around Asian female bodies/genitalia being different from white bodies, as mentioned in Chapter
One with the Chop Suey Circuit.
36
we consider that the era in which Osato played a beauty queen on a Broadway stage was also
one in which “Asian immigrants in the United States had limited legal status and [...]
virtually no access to work on Broadway or in Hollywood” (Oja “The Original Miss
Turnstiles”).
Osato’s mixed-race body further complicates her in/visibility and position as an Asian
American therefore helping us understand the dynamics of Asian Americanness itself. Asian
Americans exist in a position in which they are neither fully American/Western nor fully
Asian/Eastern. They thus become complicated to categorize in a world that functions
according to binaristic divisions. As critical mixed race studies scholars Rena Heinrich and
Leilani Nishime discuss, mixed-raceness is often used as a way to evidence a post racial
society and, in turn, a way to dismiss racial hierarchies when that is not the reality. As
Nishime writes in Undercover Asian: Multiracial Asian Americans in Visual Culture: “It is
far too easy, and too common, either to celebrate the visibility of multiracial people as
evidence of our newfound embrace of diversity or to dismiss those images as stereotypical,
exploitative, and accommodationist” (Nishime xvi). Additionally, Nishime’s project looks at
and critiques the “limits of our visual vocabulary for multiracial Asian Americans and [...]
how and why we are not taught to see multiracial Asian Americans in popular culture”
(Nishime xv). This idea of “not seeing” is evident in the ways that Osato’s mixed-race Asian
Americanness was often overlooked in reviews of the show. For example, Lewis Nichols of
the New York Times wrote: “Miss Osato brought down the highest rafters when she appeared
a year ago in One Touch of Venus, and there is no reason to replace any of those rafters now.
Her dancing is easy and her face expressive” (Nichols). Not naming her mixed-race
Asianness in this particular time period could be read as a sign of acceptance or assimilation,
but it could also reflect the complex identity space that Osato inhabits, as reviewers and
audiences may not have been able to place her body in any one distinct racial category. Rena
Heinrich discusses this in Race and Role: The Mixed-Race Asian Experience in American
Drama, where she theorizes a double liminality in which “mixed-race Asians form a
particular subjectivity that is constructed in response to dominant and subdominant
discourses and tempered by lived experience and an individual’s own assertion of self”
(Heinrich 15). In other words, the mixed-race Asian exists both within the dominant (white)
society/culture/identity, while simultaneously being in a minoritarian position/culture.
37
Thinking with Osato’s complex position as a mixed-race Japanese American
performer in the context of Japanese American internment, I imagine that she was likely a
site of visibility to Asian audience members, while possibly “passing” as white to most other
audience members. Heinrich cites Karen Shimakawa’s work in National Abjection: The
Asian American Body Onstage as arguing that the Asian American’s “movement between
visibility and invisibility, foreignness and domestication/assimilation” (Shimakawa 3) “is
further complicated when the mixed-Asian body is invisibilized as other from multiple
sub-bodies politic like Asian America” (Heinrich 5). Heinrich’s reading and expansion of
Shimakawa’s work demonstrates a tension between the Asian American and the mixed-race
Asian American. Heinrich states: “Multiracial subjects complicate, subvert, and trouble the
tenuous boundaries of monoracial cultural logic” in their act of “shape shifting” (4). Within
Asian American communities, much has been debated with regards to the in/exclusion of
mixed-race Asian Americans.22 This includes discussions about “monoraciality [and]
‘passing’—or falsely posing as white and abandoning one’s other parentage—as a form of
social and cultural betrayal” (Heinrich 6), as well as a form of survival. Not all mixed-race
Asians necessarily want to “pass” but it can be something read onto their bodies by
spectators rather than actively enacted by themselves. Monoraciality or “passing” may be
read on Osato’s body as Ivy Smith, a character who is described as a prime example of an
American/New Yorker. Additionally, at this point, Osato “had years of experience in
neutralizing her race through the use of makeup” by “chang[ing] the convex contours of her
face to concave, more Occidental ones [...] which [she] did with heavy shadowing” (Oja, “A
Japanese American Star During World War II” 143). On a visibly unquestionable Asian body,
being represented as the “ideal American” creates the Asian body as “model minority,” but in
Osato’s mixed-raceness and practices to “pass” as white, this may not be a factor at all.
Shimakawa writes that the model minority “illustrates the very contradictions that
characterize abjection. Praised and valued for their ability (and inclination) to assimilate into
the ‘mainstream’ (with an eye toward eventually disappearing in/as it)” (13). Within this
framework of abjection and assimilation, Osato may be read as “disappearing” into the
22 I write this thinking about my own conversations, a CBC News article by Emily Wong, and Vulture’s Andrea
Long Chu’s article about the mixed-race Asian American appearing in literature as a metaphor for assimilation.
I problematize the in/exclusion of mixed-race Asian Americans but acknowledge that that is not my focus at this
juncture.
38
mainstream, evidenced by her Asianness not being addressed, and specifically her
mixed-race Asianness providing a particular invisibility.
While musicals such as Chee Chee (1928)23 and South Pacific (1949)24 lean into the
orientalist stereotype of the oversexualized Asian female, Osato and her role as Smith offer
the possibility of a different representation of Asian femininity in musical theatre in which
her Asianness is not her entire personality or dominant trait. She is instead a woman with
skills, talents, hobbies, and “all-American” values. Additionally, Osato highlights the
complex tensions of in/visibility that plague the mixed-race Asian in particular.
Thus, in this section I have highlighted Anything Goes as an example of the
traditionalism and Asian stereotyping that is all too common in musical theatre––especially
in the early 20th century––while also providing examples of how it was adapted to be
presentable in the 21st century. As a counterpoint, I have analyzed On The Town as an early
example of a show that complicates the idea and stereotype of the Asian body on-stage with
its diversity in casting and Osato’s mixed-race Asianness. Together, these two shows help
map a trajectory in representations of Asianness that move from limiting and inflexible to
something more complicated, nuanced, and full.
GOLDEN AGE MUSICALS: Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Oriental” Musicals
In my interviews with a variety of Asian Canadian musical theatre artists, both
creative team members and performers, one of the first questions I asked them was: “what is
the first thing you think of when you think of Asians in musical theatre?” The majority of
their “knee-jerk” responses were Miss Saigon and actress Lea Salonga, but musical theatre
writer Kevin Wong also mentioned other “classics” like The King and I and South Pacific.
Within the canon of musical theatre, what I often refer to as “the classics” are those popular,
mainstream musicals that originated in the Golden Age of musical theatre.
24 South Pacific premiered on Broadway April 7, 1949. It was composed by Richard Rodgers, with lyrics by
Oscar Hammerstein II, and book by Oscar Hammerstein II and Joshua Logan. The musical is set in the South
Pacific during World War II. I think primarily with the characters of Bloody Mary and Liat in regards to the
oversexualized Asian female. Liat as the silent, young, obedient China Doll, and Bloody Mary as a version of
the Dragon Lady in being a temptress, a saleswoman, and a bold Asian female who “sells” her daughter Liat.
23 Chee Chee is a musical with music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Lorenz Hart, and book by Lew M. Fields.
Chee-Chee follows the Grand Eunuch of China wishing to retire and hand over duties to his middle-aged son,
Li Pi Tchou, who, in rejection of the job, flees the palace. This musical plays with the idea of sex and gender
through themes of cross dressing, with the Grand Eunuch’s daughter disguising herself as a coolie, and the
“sexual commodification” of Tchou’s wife as “she sells herself repeatedly for trinkets” (Symonds, 212).
39
Amongst musical theatre scholars/historians, there is some disagreement about the
exact timing of the Golden Age, but for my purposes I frame the Golden Age of musical
theatre as beginning with Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! in 1943 and ending with
Bock and Harnick’s Fiddler on the Roof in 1964.25 The Golden Age of musical theatre
marked a change from “gratuitous entertainment elements as respite from relentless plots”
(Hurwitz 139) to integrated musical theatre in which all elements (dance, text, music) were
used to move the plot forward, and the songs were plot and character driven. Typically, many
of these “classic” shows are familiar to those not entrenched in musical theatre because these
shows have earned recognition and familiarity beyond the community and/or have had movie
musical adaptations due to their popularity on stage.
In the Golden Age of musical theatre, icons Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein
II arise consistently due to their extremely popular works of the time and their role in the
shift of musical theatre’s form from Broadway revue shows to integrated musicals. In my
work looking at the evolution of representations of Asianness, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s
“Chopsticks” or “Oriental” musicals stand out as important sites of inquiry: South Pacific
(1949), The King and I (1951), and Flower Drum Song (1958).26 The Rodgers and
Hammerstein musicals of this “Oriental” era emerge from a “complex web of cultural
products” (Ma 144), with the musicals being adapted from written texts such as short stories
or novels, created for the Broadway stage, and then transitioned to the silver screen in film
formats. Continuing beyond their debuts and into the 21st century, all three of these musicals
have had revivals or revisals (in which the show is revisited, rewritten, and therefore
“revised”) of some sort within the last 30 years. They have thus remained extremely relevant
to the culture and practice of musical theatre.
The Golden Age musicals that I will focus on in this section are The King and I and
Flower Drum Song. I argue that The King and I presents Asian culture, specifically Thai
26 “Chopsticks musicals” is a term pulled from Sheng-mei Ma in “9. Rodgers and Hammerstein’s ‘Chopsticks’
Musicals” from East-West Montage: Reflections on Asian Bodies in Diaspora. “Oriental musicals” is a term
pulled from Bruce A. McConachie in “The ‘Oriental’ Musicals of Rodgers and Hammerstein and the U.S. War
in Southeast Asia” (among others who refer to this subset of musicals as the “Oriental” Rodgers and
Hammerstein musicals).
25 Nathan Hurwitz in A History of The American Musical Theatre names 1964-70 as “the search for relevancy”
in musical theatre. This was due to the social shift in America in the context of post-WWII, the Civil Rights
Movement in America, the Vietnam War, and attitudes towards sex and drugs changing. 1964 in particular also
names the shift in pop culture towards an infatuation with pop music and the rise of the Beatles and “The British
Invasion” (171). With pop culture and pop music changing, musical theatre was also forced to adjust.
40
culture, as backwards and infantile therefore affirming the need for Western/European
interference and influence. For Flower Drum Song, I argue that the shift from the foreign,
stereotyped Asian to the naturalized, complex Asian American allows for a history of Asian
Americanness to be told and popularized in ways that challenge strict notions of the
perpetually foreign and infantilized Asian on-stage and in North America.
The King and I (1951)
The King and I premiered on Broadway on March 29, 1951, with music by Richard
Rodgers, and book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II. The King and I is set in the early
1860s in Bangkok, Siam (now known as Thailand), when British school teacher Anna
Leonowens and her son arrive to teach English to the royal children and the King’s favored
wives as part of the King’s operation to modernize the country and bring Siam “what is good
on Western culture” (Hammerstein Act 1, Scene 2). Bruce McConachie, in his article “The
‘Oriental’ Musicals of Rodgers and Hammerstein and the U.S. War in Southeast Asia,”
speaks to containers and containment as concepts that both American musicals and American
foreign policy employ in order to portray a sense of necessary takeover of Southeast Asia.27
McConachie draws on a parallel between Rodgers and Hammerstein and Henry Kissinger,
former United States Secretary of State, in which they believe/assume that “the West had a
monopoly on knowing reality” and that “the people of Southeast Asia could not understand
their lives and their place in the world [without the aid of western advisors]” (McConachie
385). The King and I plays on this idea of exoticism in which the East is backward and needs
saving therefore upholding the narrative of necessary imperialism and Western aid through
play text, music and lyrics.
Hye Won Kim, citing the work of McConachie and Raymond Knapp, argues that
Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “lyrics subtly justify colonial notions of national development in
Asian countries” (H. Kim 156). An example of this is the song “Getting to Know You,”
which “exemplifies the United States’ paternalistic treatment of Asia” (Galella “Democracy”
28). The song “suggests equal exchange” but, in reality, is European dominant with Anna’s
way being the correct way to proceed; or as Galella writes: “Here is the benevolent
27 McConachie: “I hope to demonstrate that the popularity of Rodgers and Hammerstein's ‘oriental’ musicals,
The King and I, South Pacific, and The Flower Drum Song, helped to establish a legitimate basis for the
American war against the people of Southeast Asia in the 1960s” (386). McConachie speaks to US involvement
in the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the Cold War.
41
imperialism of Anna singing ‘putting it my way, but nicely’” (Galella “Democracy” 28). As
both Kim and Galella argue, The King and I uses music and affect to promote a U.S.
imperialist vision and gratitude to a colonial way of learning therefore “enforc[ing] biases
about how Asians should be represented in mainstream US musical theatre” (H. Kim 157).
As I have argued, these representations have often depicted Asians as inhuman and
unimportant. Another song in the musical that demonstrates this is “Shall I Tell You What I
Think of You?” in which “Anna sings about how the gesture of crawling resembles that of
toads eating dust” (H. Kim 159) and “refers to bowing as ‘a disgusting exhibition’ of a
‘ridiculous position,’ and exclaims how all the people are ‘Toads! Toads!’” (H. Kim 159).
This reifies an image of Asians as uncivilized, inhuman, and more similar to animals than
white people—a comparison seen with other communities of colour such as African
American and Indigenous people being referred to as “savages” in need of Western
education. The song’s dehumanization also echoes the historical practice of human display of
Asians in the U.S.—when they were made to exhibit their “ridiculous positions” and cultural
practices for the white colonial gaze’s entertainment. For Rodgers and Hammerstein, as
evidenced in The King and I, in order for the Asian to be respected and dignified, they must
be assimilated into Western practices.
The stereotypes present in The King and I continue in the tradition of how U.S.
musical theatre has represented Asians as meek, laughable, unintelligent, and childlike in
comparison to the West, therefore sustaining an American attitude of superiority. Firstly, we
see the King of Siam inhabiting the trope of the domineering Asian male—similar to the
portrayal of the Mikado in The Mikado.28 The King is the controlling, unemotional,
authoritarian ruler of an empire who is met with unaccustomed resistance to his demands.
Thinking with McConachie’s container concept, the King is seen as having a different
interior to exterior “suggesting a conflict between potent masculinity on the outside and
prepubescent child within” (McConachie 390). He is simultaneously powerful on his own but
infantilized with Anna. He embodies “the belief that Asians in positions of authority were
essentially wide-eyed children who would welcome the fatherly intervention of the West”
(McConachie 391). The King and I “teaches Americans ‘to disrespect [Thai culture as]
28 The Mikado is the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta that satirizes British politics and social issues. The character
of the Mikado is the Japanese emperor who is controlling over his family and his kingdom. The King of Siam
and the Mikado are similar in their royal positions as well as their behaviours towards governing.
42
childlike’” (H. Kim 157-158) by relying on exoticism and the infantilization of both the King
and Siam. As such, the actual children in the musical serve as symbols of the East and a
stereotype of the potential of a model minority as they are young and naïve enough to be
shaped into “good Western citizens” (which we will see again in Miss Saigon). As
McConachie states: “Children, especially Asian children, are tabulae rasae on which may be
written the dictates of the West” (394). The children are the future of the country therefore if
they can be shaped to adhere to Western practices and expectations, the country can be
controlled by the West. Compared to the King, whose mind must be changed and
re-educated, the children of the kingdom are fresh, blank slates, who can be easily
Westernized. Thus, if the King represents the old ways that must be reformed, the children
represent a bright Western influenced future. They are both representations of Siam and the
East in which “Siam is reduced to the status of a child in need of western schooling”
(McConachie 391).
Despite the numerous issues with how Thai people are represented in The King and I,
it remains a frequently programmed and performed show to this day. Additionally, it has
remained relevant in contemporary musical theatre such as Soft Power. This musical (still in
development) takes the tropes established in the Rodgers and Hammerstein classic and
subverts them, creating “A King and I, but from China’s point of view!”, as articulated by
co-writer David Henry Hwang in his track breakdown of the 2020 Off-Broadway Cast
Recording (Hwang “Track-by-Track Breakdown”).
Flower Drum Song (1958 and 2002)
Hwang is deeply connected to the legacy of Rodgers and Hammerstein
musicals––especially Flower Drum Song. Similarly to The King and I, this “classic” was
highly popular at the time of its release on Broadway, as well as through its continued legacy
via both its movie musical adaptation in 1961 and the less popular 2002 Broadway revisal
written by Hwang.
Flower Drum Song premiered on Broadway on December 1, 1958, with music by
Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, and a book by Oscar Hammerstein II and
Joseph Fields. My main focus is this musical’s themes of Chinese Americanness, a rarity in
commercial musical theatre even today, and the major changes from the original 1958
43
version to its 2002 Broadway revisal. I was originally intrigued by Flower Drum Song when
I was assigned the song “I Enjoy Being A Girl” in my first semester of my undergraduate
degree in Music Theatre Performance. This made me realize that my Chinese body was being
labelled as particularly suited for this show and/or the character of Linda Low (who sings the
aforementioned song) because I am Chinese, and as Shimakawa writes: “that space [of the
stage] is always already densely populated with phantasms of orientalness through and
against which an Asian American performer must struggle to be seen” (17). My Asianness
was being seen over anything else and I was immediately deemed appropriate for this song,
whether it suited my vocal type or not. In discovering Flower Drum Song at the time, I was
able to learn about what these phantasms were that I would have to “work on and against”
(Muñoz 11) as an Asian Canadian musical theatre performer. Through this thesis, I continue
to expose and interrogate these phantasms: the views that my body and my work is foreign
and inferior to the white artists around me despite growing up in the West, as well as the
perception that my body must either be completely infantilized/innocent or deeply
sexualized. In looking at the evolution of representations of Asianness in musical theatre,
Flower Drum Song further helps me track the shift from the limited figure of the
homogenous Asian to a more diverse, multifaceted, and heterogenous vision of both Asians
and Asian North Americans. In this section, I analyze both the 1958 version of Flower Drum
Song and the 2002 Hwang revisal as examples of this evolution.
The original 1958 plot presents the story of Wang Ta, a first-generation
American-born Chinese boy, and the cultural conflict with his more traditional father Wang
San.29 We meet protagonist/ingénue Mei Li and her father as they arrive in San Francisco as
“illegal” immigrants from China. Mei Li is a “picture bride” in an arranged marriage to
Sammy Fong, but Fong is dating “thoroughly Americanized Chinese girl” (Hammerstein Act
1 Scene 2) Linda Low, so he makes a deal for Mei Li to marry Wang Ta instead. Much of the
show deals with the practice of arranged marriage and the cultural conflicts between
generations, as well as the greater theme of a desire to assimilate into American culture.
For the 2002 revisal, the libretto was completely rewritten and revised by Chinese
American playwright David Henry Hwang while maintaining the original music and lyrics.
29 Some names in the show are presented in traditional Chinese format of “last name, first name.” In the case of
Wang Ta and Wang San, Wang is the last name. Throughout both of the plays, Wang Ta is referred to as “Ta”
while Wang San is referred to as “Wang.”
44
The story is written through a Chinese American lens, therefore making the tone of the story
quite different. Hwang repurposed many of the songs into more tongue-in-cheek settings and
presentations, as opposed to Rodgers and Hammerstein’s orientalist, exotic, and “foreignness
as comedy” approach. The plot of this new revised version is still centered on the relationship
between Wang Ta and Mei Li, but there is more importance placed on Chinese culture, the
gentrification of Chinatown, and adjusting to America as an immigrant. There is also an
emphasis on the importance of maintaining one’s Chinese culture in America, as opposed to
the original’s insistence on the need to assimilate. In the revised version, Mei Li arrives in
San Francisco from China after her father has been killed due to his act of political rebellion
(depicted in the musical’s prologue). In San Francisco, Wang San is the owner of an old
Chinese opera theatre which is at risk of closing down due to Chinatown’s gentrification. In
response, the theatre’s performances, originally Chinese Opera, morph into a tourist
attraction containing routines of constructed Orientalism with dances utilizing Chinese fans
and gong sounds—adhering to what is expected of Chinese performers, and mirroring the
historical Chop Suey Circuit which capitalized on these same stereotypical performances of
Asianness. This choice to perform these acts based on stereotypes reflects the Chinese
American characters’ positions of autonomy and power in the way they control their own
representations and, as Muñoz might have it, their use of disidentification. For as he writes:
“disidentification is meant to be descriptive of the survival strategies the minority subject
practices in order to negotiate a phobic majoritarian public sphere that continuously elides or
punishes the existence of subjects who do not conform to the phantasm of normative
citizenship” (Muñoz 4). While disidentifications is explicitly a queer of colour analytic, I
repurpose it here in a non-queer context because the characters in the 2002 Flower Drum
Song employ these described “survival strategies”: they negotiate historical stereotypes and
capitalize on them by presenting a purposeful imitation of Asianness to an American
audience (the audience in the world of the play) to ensure the maintenance of their cultural
history (the opera theatre) in a white dominant society/country. At the same time, they gain
some measure of control over their own representation, ensuring their financial, social, and
cultural survival as individuals.
The historical contexts of both versions of Flower Drum Song are at times similar and
at others very different. As mentioned, both revolve around intergenerationality and change,
45
as well as pulling themes and aesthetics from the Chop Suey Circuit of the 1930s-1950s in
the musicals’ plots and Chinatown nightclub settings. For example, Linda Low is a nightclub
performer in both versions of the musical and is prominently showcased in songs like “Grant
Avenue” and “Fan Tan Fannie.” The casting of the musical itself, while likely unintentional,
is reminiscent of practices in the Chop Suey Circuit era, with many of the actors in the 1958
production being of Japanese descent—echoing how the Chop Suey Circuit employed
Japanese Americans as part of their “all-Chinese floor shows.”
In terms of the specific political and historical contexts of each version, the original
1958 version does not concern itself with socio-political elements of the U.S. or China, other
than to note American Citizenship School and the long process of immigration. This is only
mentioned to set up the meeting of Mei Li as an “illegal” immigrant and “Hong Kong picture
bride” whom Sammy Fong has received as a graduation present from his mother (Act 1, Sc.
1).
In the 2002 version, however, Hwang writes explicitly of a changing China therefore
portraying a history of Chinese immigration on stage. He writes the following stage
directions in the Prologue scene:
The ensemble members become Chinese citizens on bicycles in the Peoples' Republic
of China. [...] Chinese citizens become Communist Party Members, waving Chairman
Mao's Little Red Book. [...] Mei-li’s father enters, angered by the spectacle. Mei-li
tries to stop him, but he won't be dissuaded: tearing his copy of the Little Red Book,
he tosses it to the ground in protest. The crowd falls upon him, and he is apprehended
by soldiers as the crowd disperses. [...] Mei-li's father breaks free of his captors long
enough to whisper a command to his daughter: “Go!” Then he's dragged off by
soldiers, leaving Mei-li alone with her drum. Mei-li escapes from China onto a boat
headed for America with other Refugees. The Refugees speak, beginning with the one
we will come to know as Chao. [...] The New Immigrants disperse into Chinatown.
Mei-li walks toward an old building: The Golden Pearl Theatre. (Hwang, Prologue)
As opposed to the infantilized Asia or Asian that is powerless and needs saving, these
characters are imbued with agency. This is shown by Mei Li’s father’s rebellion, as well as
her own decision to leave China. Throughout the play, the concept of the white saviour is
subverted in the way Mei Li finds connection through her own Chinese community in
46
America as opposed to a King and I type story that hinges on needing to be taught the ways
of the Western world by a dominant white person or culture.
Like the revivals of Anything Goes, the 2002 Flower Drum Song production also had
certain limitations, meaning that characters in both the 1958 and 2002 versions continued to
adhere to Asian stereotypes like the Dragon Lady and the China Doll. Linda Low is Flower
Drum Song’s Dragon Lady. She is the classic sexualized female stereotype. She is a brash,
outspoken, Asian American character, who, additionally as an Asian female performer, is
both sexualized and fetishized. For example, in the 1959 libretto, Linda Low’s song “I Enjoy
Being a Girl” describes her being “proud that [her] silhouette is curvy” (Act 1 Scene 2) and
being somewhat flattered by her objectification:
When I hear the complimentary whistle
That greets my bikini by the sea,
I turn and I glower and I bristle-
But I’m happy to know the whistle's meant for me!
- “I Enjoy Being A Girl” (Act 1 Scene 2)
Linda, in line with the Dragon Lady stereotype of being strong, deceitful, mysterious, and
sexual, sings about her ambition to find a man who will take care of her and pay for the
things she wants in life, playing on the role of being a deceitful and manipulative woman (or
a “gold digger”):
From men we may take an awful beating.
They're pains in our pretty little necks,
But all girls are interested in eating-
And we must have another sex to pay the checks!
I’m strictly a female female,
And my future, I hope, will be
In the home of a brave and free male
Who’ll enjoy being a guy
Having a girl like me.
- “I Enjoy Being A Girl” (Act 1 Scene 2)
In contrast, Mei Li takes on the role of the China Doll in her innocent, obedient, docile
nature, and in the original 1958 version, her role as a “picture bride” in an arranged marriage.
47
This is expressed in the song “You Are Beautiful,” which appears in both the original version
and the revised version. Wang Ta sings “you are beautiful, small and shy”—harkening back
to this historical view and obsession with Chinese women being physically small and having
small features. In the 1959 libretto, Mei Li is described as a “fine, filial, obedient girl”
(Hammerstein Act 1 Scene 1) of a “sweet nineteen” years old, the main attributes of the
China Doll trope—obedience and youth. Her smallness and objecthood––literally a “doll” to
be sold––is relevant in the stage directions of the same scene where Sammy Fong is
described as saying: “You don't get them like that over here any more!” with the stage
direction of “(‘Selling’ MEI LI)” (Hammerstein Act 1 Scene 1). Sammy Fong is comparing
the Chinese immigrant body and identity of Mei Li to that of the Chinese American. In
contrast to Linda Low, Mei Li is the desired object: a soft, docile Asian female preferred over
the forward, flirtatious Asian American female.
Though acknowledged as the “first show in Broadway history to feature a
predominantly Asian American cast” (C. Kim 1), 1958’s Flower Drum Song used yellowface
in casting, with its “Broadway premiere featur[ing] two roles cast in yellowface, with one
white actor and one African American actress performing leads” (Tacorda 123). The African
American actress was Juanita Hall, who “donned yellow face for the Broadway play, [and]
was the only non-Asian star in the [musical’s] film, playing Madame Liang” (Tacorda 123).
She also appeared on Broadway in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s South
Pacific––demonstrating the casting trend of conflating not only different ethnic Asian groups
but also casting anyone who was either non-white or racially ambiguous as Asian. Richard
Rodgers comments on the multiracial casting in Flower Drum Song saying: “This ethnically
mixed cast [of Flower Drum Song]... gave the illusion of being Chinese. [...] People want to
believe what they see on a stage” (qtd in Ma 153). From this quote, we see that casting the
appropriate cultural and ethnic groups was not a priority in the slightest. Rodgers speaks to
the “illusion” of Chineseness, which highlights the interchangeability of people of colour, as
well as the continued understanding and practice of using Asianness, specifically
Chineseness, as a costume that can be created and worn by others. The belief that Asianness
is a costume or style instead of an identity, and that it can be claimed by anyone, has been
taught to audiences through white portrayals and yellowface presentations of Asians. The
idea that one can simply don and thus convincingly perform “being Chinese” reappears here
48
in ways reminiscent of the disguises in Anything Goes. The impersonating of Asianness, in
addition to Asian Americanness being overlooked, allows for the dehumanization of the
Asian, especially when, in the case of Flower Drum Song, the musical was a “huge success
both aesthetically and commercially” (C. Kim 1). The success of Flower Drum Song’s
inauthentic casting and presentation of Asians and Asian Americanness proves to Asian
actors and Asian audiences that their genuine experiences and bodies are not valued and can
instead be replaced by practically anyone else.
In looking at the differences between the 1958 version and the 2002 version of
Flower Drum Song, I observe the evolution of historical stereotypes but also the limits
inherent in attempting to reframe and remake those stereotypes in the present. Nevertheless,
Flower Drum Song is evidence of a progression towards more complex and nuanced Asian
representations on mainstream stages, which bolsters public visibility for both Asian
Americans and their mid-twentieth century history.
THE LEGACY, IMPACT, AND INFLUENCE OF MISS SAIGON
In the final section of this chapter, I spend significant time with Miss Saigon because
of the emphasis placed on it by the artists that I interviewed. As such, I posit that this show
has been one of the largest influences on contemporary Asian artists in leadership and
creative roles today, and has thus had a major impact in shaping the present and future of
Asianness in musical theatre. That said, it notably employs yellowface and now-familiar
Asian stereotypes. In light of this seeming contradiction, this final section explores Asian
communities’ investments in and engagements with the show despite these tropes––focusing
particularly on how they have navigated working within its representations and/or how they
have found empowerment in contemporary productions of Miss Saigon.
Miss Saigon, as stated in 2017 by Michael Paulson of The New York Times, is “one of
the most successful hits in musical theater—as well as one of the most polarizing and most
protested” (Paulson). Miss Saigon premiered on the West End in 1989 and later on Broadway
on April 11, 1991. It is a sung-through musical, based on the Puccini opera Madama
Butterfly, set against the backdrop of the Vietnam War with music by Claude-Michel
Schönberg and Alain Boublil, and lyrics by Boublil and Richard Maltby Jr. The story follows
Kim, a Vietnamese girl, who falls in love with Chris, an American soldier, and the tragedy
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and sacrifice their romance brings. The show opens at a Saigon bar/brothel named
Dreamland where Kim is the new, inexperienced, virginal girl, brought in by the brothel
owner named The Engineer. The other main woman we meet in the brothel is named Gigi,
and she and Kim, along with the other girls in the bar, sing “The Movie in My Mind,”
fantasizing about being taken away from this place and being saved—particularly citing
being saved by “a strong G.I.” (“The Movie in My Mind”). This echoes the continued
concept of Asians needing saving, particularly from the West, that was seen in The King and
I. With these two female characters, we once again see the stereotypes of the China Doll and
the Dragon Lady. The young, naive, and virginal Kim is the figure of the China Doll. In
contrast, the figure of the Dragon Lady might be applied to all of the female sex workers we
meet at the bar but Gigi especially embodies this trope. Due to Gigi having more experience
and having done this song and dance (literally and figuratively) before, she is jaded and
highly sexual. She lacks the “clean” aesthetic that the China Doll is known for.
Many in the Asian community have protested or condemned Miss Saigon for its
continued portrayal of Asian women as sex objects, especially in the 2017 Broadway revival.
But as actress Lea Salonga notes, there is a reality to this portrayal as well:
You can rally and rail against Asian women as prostitutes, but you can't erase history.
This is set in 1975, not in 2017, and this really happened. I'm from Manila, and it still
happens. Go to any red-light district, and that's what you see: a girl with desperation
in her eyes, wanting to not be doing this, and another girl who is dead on the inside. I
don't know of too many shows that allow the audience to see that reality. (qtd in
Paulson)
I cite Salonga’s comment on the sexualization of Asian women and the depiction of
prostitution in Miss Saigon to illustrate how this show may be seen as “empowering” through
its honest representation of the socio-economic conditions facing marginalized communities.
On the other hand, Diep Tran’s article for American Theatre discusses and problematizes the
stereotype categories in Miss Saigon saying: “Vietnamese women are victims, Vietnamese
men are villains, and Americans are well-meaning buffoons” (Tran). The character of Kim is
a “victim” as she, at the end of the play, takes her own life to ensure that Chris, the American
G.I., will take care of their child. Shimakawa, similarly to McConachie who notes that the
King in The King and I represents Siam, writes of Kim as “not merely embody[ing]
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Vietnameseness or even Vietnamese femaleness or femininity— she is Vietnam” (31). While
Kim is the personification of Vietnam, Chris serves as the personification of America. Not
entirely unlike the relationship between Anna and the King in The King and I, Kim and her
child become the feminine Asia that needs saving. Kim is seen as both the victim of
circumstance (poverty and war) and of men—both the American Chris and the Vietnamese
Thuy, the man that she was in an arranged marriage with and who she kills to protect her son.
This plays into what Tran describes when he names Vietnamese men as villains with both
Thuy, who takes up the role of the traditional, controlling Asian male, and The Engineer, the
French-Vietnamese brothel owner.
The function of Asian male stereotypes in Miss Saigon is expanded on by Shimakawa
in National Abjection, wherein she compares Tam, Kim’s mixed-race son, to The Engineer.
Tam is the model minority who is harmless and unthreatening to the United States, while The
Engineer “represents a threat to national/racial borders that constitute Vietnameseness and
U.S. Americanness and so must perpetually undergo abjection” (39). In The Engineer’s
mixed-raceness, he must navigate the lines between visibility and invisibility, domestic and
foreign, all while deeply desiring (and attempting) to be a capitalist American. While the
U.S. privileges heterosexuality, The Engineer challenges and threatens this as he is
“simultaneously lascivious, sexually exploitative, pansexual, and desexualized” (41). The
Engineer embodies the ambivalent, perplexing makeup of the threat of Asianness to the
United States. Similarly to the roles of the King and his children in The King and I, “Tam is
the embodiment of assimilable Asian American abjection, one who may be allowed to pass
through the borders of Americanness (by ‘cleansing’ him of the maternal taint of Asianness
and recreating him as all-white), whereas The Engineer undergoes the opposite process: his
paternity and biraciality are erased in favor of his Asianness, which is demonized and
jettisoned as abject and inassimilable” (Shimakawa 39). In both musicals, the young children
have the potential of becoming model minorities through a kind of submission to
colonial/imperial domination, while the adults represent the threat of the East.
In addition to the flawed and stereotypical characters in Miss Saigon, the show has a
history of yellowface which has upheld racial hierarchies. In the 1989 London production
there were two roles in yellowface: Jonathan Pryce as The Engineer and Keith Burns as
Thuy. Both white actors, Pryce and Burns wore prosthetics to alter the shape of their eyes,
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and makeup to alter the color of their skin. Once slated for a Broadway premiere, Pryce was
announced as transferring with the show in his role as The Engineer, much to protests and
anger from the Asian American community. Actor BD Wong described his first reaction to
this news by saying that he thought “surely the show [would] come to the United States, but
the yellowface will never happen here, because that's the kind of thing that only happens in
England now” (Paulson). Alongside BD Wong, Hwang petitioned and “wrote letters to
Actors’ Equity protesting Pryce’s casting” (“Yellowface, Casting, and the Legacy of Miss
Saigon”).30 Returning to Wong, he wrote:
There is no doubt in my mind of the irreparable damage to my rights as an actor that
would be wrought if (at the threshold of the 21st century) Asian actors are kept from
bringing their unique dignity to the specifically Asian roles in Miss Saigon, and
therefore to all racially specific roles in every future production which will look to the
precedent Miss Saigon is about to set as a concrete model. (“Yellowface, Casting, and
the Legacy of Miss Saigon”)
The defense from the casting team of Miss Saigon was that they could not find an appropriate
Asian actor for the role of The Engineer despite doing a worldwide search. Due to the
protests and letters to Equity, who would have to approve a visa for Pryce, Equity originally
“denied permission for Pryce to play the Engineer on Broadway. In response, producer
Cameron Mackintosh announced that he would rather cancel the Broadway transfer than lose
Pryce in the role” (“Yellowface, Casting, and the Legacy of Miss Saigon”). The threat paid
off in allowing Pryce in the yellowface role on Broadway, although this time without the
prosthetics and makeup, in exchange for the numerous American jobs on Miss Saigon and
the avoided “loss of $25 million in advance ticket sales for the Shubert Theater”
(“Yellowface, Casting, and the Legacy of Miss Saigon”). Since the controversy, it is said that
the producers “have chosen only actors of Asian heritage to play the Engineer, both on
Broadway and on the United States tours” (Paulson). According to my research, many of the
actors have actually been of Filipino descent—Raul Aranas on the 1992 Original U.S. Tour,
Jon Jon Briones on the 2nd U.K. Tour in 2001, the West End Revival in 2014, and the
30 Actors' Equity Association (“Equity") is the U.S. labor union that represents more than 51,000 professional
actors and stage managers.
52
Broadway Revival in 2017, and Seann Miley Moore on the most recent international tour that
played in Australia, Manila, Taiwan, and Singapore in the 2023/2024 theatre season.
Despite the many criticisms of Miss Saigon as a show, its casting, and its stereotypical
characters, it has undoubtedly made an impact on Asian American and Asian Canadian
communities. Miss Saigon has been an important musical in the careers of many Asians in
North American musical theatre, as well as a complex site of identification. This is
exemplified in the fact that in many of my interviews, Miss Saigon came up as a pivotal show
in the lives and/or careers of many Asian Canadian artists. Playwright Aaron Jan and actor
Stephanie Sy speak to the particular impact it had on a generation of artists:
AARON JAN (in reference to what he thinks about when he thinks of “Asians and
Asianness in musical theatre”): Obviously I think about Miss Saigon, but I think my
relationship with Miss Saigon is different from a lot of femmes because I remember
back in the day, that was a way for a lot of Asian artists, older Asian artists to get into
theatre. One of my colleagues, Karen Ancheta in Hamilton (ON) said the reason she
wanted to be an actor was because she wanted to be in Miss Saigon, because she saw
it, and she was like, “that's the show for me.”
STEPHANIE SY: I think [Miss Saigon is] where everyone in my generation started.
I feel like that’s the thing that brought everyone to musical theater specifically.
Obviously there's been a lot of singing in our history, with Filipinos in
particular—and I think the songs that we were learning were from Miss Saigon, so
that was kind of my introduction to musical theater, to Asians in musical theater. It
was one of the only musicals that we could be cast in. That, and obviously The King
and I and Flower Drum Song, but Miss Saigon was the big hit with all the pop
numbers, or all the recognizable songs that we could learn. I was singing them when I
was seven years old—and they're far too mature for a seven-year-old—but those are
the [songs] that were introduced to us because they were like, “this is the Asian
musical.”
The impact of Miss Saigon as both a symbol of hope for Asian actors in the industry as well
as a practical option, is part of what has produced its positive impact on the community.
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Actors Genny Sermonia and Kimberly-Ann Truong also speak to Miss Saigon as major
touchstones and opportunities in their professional careers:
GENNY SERMONIA: My first professional musical was Miss Saigon for Drayton
Entertainment, so that was very special and everyone in that cast, even the
non-Asians, felt like it was a very special show to be part of. [...] There weren't a lot
of us in the industry in Ontario. That was my very first experience.
KIMBERLY-ANN TRUONG: My introduction [to musical theatre], in a big way,
was Miss Saigon. It’s crazy that I [was in Miss Saigon on Broadway]. How did that
happen in my lifetime? And right out of school, to be around so many Asian people
was the most fascinating experience I've ever had. Blessed but also damn, we let them
get away with a lot, as a cast.
In order for Asian actors to participate in Miss Saigon, however, I contend that they must
engage with practices of disidentification. The latter not only helps them reframe a show that
engages with harmful stereotypes, but is a necessary aspect of survival for marginalized folks
seeking a professional career in the industry. Thus, the actor must engage and work with the
stereotypical roles available to them––either subtly critiquing them, locating forms of
empowerment, or pursuing minoritarian material survival. In other words: “this is the only
job/role I can be cast in so I will make it work.” That is what many interviewees seemed to
feel about Miss Saigon: a sense of gratitude and joy alongside something more unsettling.
Truong was part of the 2017 Broadway revival of Miss Saigon and speaks to this experience
with both gratitude and frustration. Truong was the only Vietnamese woman in the Broadway
revival, as she explains:
Politically, it was very jarring to realize that I was cast as an Asian woman, but they
actually had no idea that I was Vietnamese. My cast was very aware and was like,
“wow, this is so cool. This is going to bring so much to the show.” The creative team
had no freaking clue and didn't care what [you were], you were Asian. [The attitude
was] “be grateful you're in the show.”
This indifference to the specificity of Asianness resonates with Rodgers’ previous comment
about Flower Drum Song and audiences buying into the cast’s “illusion of being Chinese”
(qtd in Ma 153). For Miss Saigon, although different as it was not pertaining to yellowface,
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this same idea of the “illusion” of being Vietnamese was enough. This conflating of
Asianness and the lack of care from those outside the community was prevalent in the
continuous casting of non-Vietnamese people but extraordinarily exemplified in the fact that
the Vietnamese language in the song “The Wedding Ceremony” or “The Ceremony (Dju Vui
Vai)” was gibberish “meant to ‘sound Vietnamese’” (Lewis) and was not changed until
Truong and her Vietnamese castmate Christopher Vo brought it to light in the rehearsal room
in 2017. In my interview with Truong, she recounts the experience of speaking up in the
room and being ignored in regards to the accuracy of the language:
They used to have a song that was gibberish, that was fake Vietnamese, that for some
reason passed in the UK and for the last however many years Miss Saigon has been a
musical. I didn't know until the audition, the callback, they sent it to me to sing. And I
was like, “wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.” The way they didn't even try to write it in
Vietnamese is crazy. Like what? Who's doing fake languages? So then in my audition,
I sang it in proper Viet. I just winged it. I was like, “I'm just going to sing it the way it
would make more sense to me.” They didn't say anything. So I thought that was OK,
and I booked it, so I was like, “oh, clearly they liked that.” But when we were in the
room learning the song, all the girls were like, “can Kimmy teach us the song? She's
Vietnamese.” And they literally all got shushed. And then I put my hand up to the
supervisor and was like, “yeah, I can teach this. And we should probably reword the
words, I can give you guys a few words that actually make sense and fit in the
phrase.” Very easy. I just needed to change some consonants. I didn't need to change
anything else. It kind of works, even if I just used rhyming words, at least it made
some sense. It wasn't the most brilliant piece of art. But they shut me up in front of
the whole cast and it was pretty ruthless. They were like, “no, we're going to keep it
how it is. This is how it is. We don't want to hear anything else. Stop. Kimmy's not
going to teach the song. We're going to get someone else to teach it.” And then [the
person teaching it] felt weird. They were like, “I feel weird now being beside Kimmy,
who is Vietnamese. And I'm teaching the whole cast gibberish.” It was this whole
thing, and then it ended up getting rewritten only because a man brought it up to the
creatives. I had to go up to this man and be like, “I know what's happening, I’m
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coming to you privately, I'm asking you as an artist, and also as a Vietnamese woman,
to say something on behalf of me but keep it anonymous. But it's for the greater good
of the show.” It's for the greater good of theater in general. So I'll take this one. I'll
take this and just keep doing my job. But it was quite heartbreaking. So he brought it
up and there was no hesitation. There wasn't even a blink. It was like, “OK, we're
changing the song immediately.” And that man taught the song, not me. But he'd keep
looking at me like “I’m sorry.” Then I'd privately be teaching people how to [speak
Vietnamese]. Even the interactions across the stage and when we're in war scenes,
when we're ad-libbing out loud, every other production was gibberish. And I just
think that's so offensive. And so I taught my cast mates privately. They would literally
come up to me while I was doing quick changes or in between rehearsals or even
when we weren't working. I would get texts like, “can you send me a voice message
of what I should say because I don't want to be yelling gibberish.” [...] The man got
credited in articles and other publications for writing and teaching the songs. There
was a whole article about it. And he was like, “oh my god, I'm so sorry, Kimmy.” He
literally felt so [bad] and I was like, “What do we do?” And I was Canadian [in an
American production]. I was the only Canadian woman. It’s my first time on
Broadway, it's one of my first jobs ever. Everything was just against me. [...] It was
scary for him, but he did it. And I'm grateful he did just for the greater good of
whatever happens moving forward. But that was a strange thing that happened.
Of this notable change for the 2017 version of the show, Marc Thibodeau––cited as the
“longtime Miss Saigon publicist” in Paulson’s New York Times article––says: “The first week
of rehearsals (for the Broadway revival), Alain Boublil met with Christopher Vo, a
Vietnamese cast member, who suggested some rewording on the wedding blessing to make it
genuine and to make sense. Alain took his suggestion, and it went into the show early in
rehearsals and has been part of the show in previews” (qtd in Paulson). Both the fact of the
song being in gibberish Vietnamese from 1989 up until the rehearsals in 2017 is absurd, and
the fact that Truong, as a Vietnamese woman, was disregarded in her attempt to update and
bring truth and accuracy to the piece, speaks to some of the ways in which Asian people are
ignored and unacknowledged in musical theatre spaces––a normalized invisibility of the
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Asian and Asian American body. Unfortunately, as I have shown, these experiences are
typical of how Asianness has been understood in musical theatre––both on-stage and off.
That said, the multiplicity and malleability of Asian representation in Miss Saigon can
be seen in the role of Ellen. Ellen is the American wife of Chris, the G.I. and star-crossed
lover of Kim. She is a character that is normally played by a white actor, therefore
contrasting the white, American relationship of Chris and Ellen against the exotic,
mixed-race relationship of Chris and Kim. The contrast of these relationships paints one
racial dynamic as normal, appropriate, and genuine, and the other as fake, wrong, and
unreasonable. Throughout the years, at least two Asian actors, Truong as the Ellen
understudy in the 2017 revival, and Margaret Ann Gates in 1998, have played this character.
Casting an Asian actor in this role expands the idea of the types of characters and people that
Asians can be in both the real world and the world of the play. It is easy to have a standoff
between a white character and an Asian character, but the Asian American identity and
America’s multiculturalism is highlighted when Ellen is played by an Asian actor.
MARGARET ANN GATES: I heard that they were looking for actual Asians to be
in the show–not people who were face-painting, and I went into the ensemble a
month or two after graduating from college. Then they offered me the role of Ellen
(an American woman who marries a returning G.I.) in 1998. I was the first Asian to
hold the role, and when I started, people were like, “That's not right! Ellen's supposed
to be white!”, which of course is ridiculous–just because someone is American
doesn't mean she has to be white. (qtd in Paulson)
KIMBERLY-ANN TRUONG: I think there's been a huge shift since Saigon to now,
on Broadway, and just throughout all of the theatre community. It wasn't as
normalized to see someone like me play a role like Ellen. When that happened, that
shifted a narrative and I felt the ripple, we all did. We were all like, “this is a really
important moment,” and it served the story so well. So I think it's things like that that
really let people go, “Oh my God, why do we see whiteness in it? Why do we think of
a role and think that it should be a white girl?” I don't know.
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Through Asian actors inhabiting the role of Ellen, we witness a subtle turn from the
perpetually foreign Asian to the naturalized Asian American. For mainstream audiences, this
highlights a different kind of non-white Americanness and an Asian American history that
has too often been ignored in musical theatre.
In regards to Miss Saigon, and speaking to both the community and career
opportunity aspects, Sermonia and Truong address the magic of having large casts of Asian
artists:
GENNY SERMONIA: When we did Miss Saigon, it felt special. Not just to the
Asians but everyone else in the cast felt very special to be part of that because they
know that this rarely happens.
KIMBERLY-ANN TRUONG: It was great. It was an incredible [experience]. We
were seriously a family. We had Vietnamese [celebrations], we would celebrate
everyone's culture all the time. It was so cool. [...] And we were just a really tight
family because, I feel like half of the cast, it was their [Broadway] debut too. That's
how big this was. This opportunity wouldn't have shown itself for a lot of these Asian
artists, had it not been Miss Saigon.
Although Miss Saigon evidently has both missteps and stereotypical perpetuations of
Asianness, productions of the show and the varied reactions to it are in themselves an
example of the multiplicity of Asians and their understandings of Asianness. For some, Miss
Saigon was the first place they saw themselves or were given professional opportunities. For
others, they are vehemently against Miss Saigon and its portrayals of Asians as sex workers.
In terms of professional survival and seeking recognition in the mainstream, this was the
show to be a part of. Additionally, due to its requirement in casting a large segment of
Asians, Saigon provided a sense of community that Asian artists came to create amongst
themselves. Personally, in 2017 as an aspiring music theatre performer, and particularly
Sheridan College Music Theatre Program hopeful (as that is where Truong, Sermonia, and
many other well-established artists are alumni), the 2017 Miss Saigon revival was a show
where I saw people like me taking up space, being sexy, vulnerable, and talented—and that
excited me. Despite its issues, rejecting Miss Saigon, disregards the work of “surviving” as
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an Asian musical theatre artist and the potential for reframing and reclaiming the stereotypes
present in the musical. As a site for Asians to come together as a community and see
themselves on stage, it is valuable. It is necessary to be critical of Miss Saigon, but as a show
in a vastly white landscape, it has also provided hope for certain generations, and it continues
to be a way into the business for Asian artists. As Richard Fung notes: “If Miss Saigon were
the only show about sexually available Asian women or money-grubbing Asian men, it
wouldn’t be a stereotype and there would be no protest—negative portrayals per se are not a
problem” (qtd in Shimakawa 43). The bigger problem, as Shimakawa notes, is “the
obsessively repeated tropes governing Asian American representation in dominant culture
focus[ing] on two (related) characteristics: sexuality and nationality” (Shimakawa 15).
In conclusion, I chose to end this chapter with Miss Saigon because of how it
embodies the perpetuation of dominant tropes and stereotypes about Asians on Broadway, as
well as how they have been dismantled and challenged. The evolution of Miss Saigon thus
demonstrates not only how the Asian body on stage has been framed as oversexualized,
desexualized, or infantile, but also how Asian performers and creatives can negotiate these
framings in ways that open up space for Asian multiplicity.
By analyzing Anything Goes, On The Town, The King and I, Flower Drum Song, and
Miss Saigon’s representations of Asianness, I have shown how the echoes of historical Asian
stereotypes and harmful performance practices reverberate in the present. Furthermore, I
have examined how these musicals build upon and draw from the history of Asians in North
America in both conscious and unconscious ways. The evolution of representations of
Asianness––from homogeneous to heterogeneous––that we have seen in these productions
has not been linear; rather, it has ebbed and flowed. In moving from Miss Saigon towards the
next chapter’s focus on Canadian based content, I will turn my focus to how (and if!) these
works provide changes in Asian representation that move beyond historical stereotypes. To
this end my focus in the next chapter will be on “non-traditional” casting in specific
Canadian music theatre productions, and representations of Asians in new and developing
Asian Canadian musical theatre.
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CHAPTER THREE: CASTING AND NEW ASIAN CANADIAN MUSICAL
THEATRE
In the previous two chapters, I have examined the historical contexts out of which
Asian stereotypes emerged in the United States and Canada, as well as how Asians have been
represented in commercial musical theatre, with a focus on Broadway. In this third chapter, I
turn my attention toward Canada, as the site of both my experience as an actor and of my
community. With a dual contemporary focus on the casting of Asian performers in
historically white roles/productions and new/developing musicals written by Asian Canadian
writers, I explore how these pieces exhibit facets of Asian representation that go beyond
stereotypes therefore creating a more complex and heterogeneous composition of Asianness
in musical theatre. While I have previously used close readings of play texts, reviews, and
scholarly literature, this chapter primarily leans on original artist interviews. In addition to
these interviews, I have had the privilege of reading and watching archival recordings or
early workshops of these new musicals, which I use to close read the works in question. That
said, due to their developmental natures, and out of respect for the writers’ process, I attempt
to limit how much I directly quote from them.
As seen in the previous two chapters, Asians have been the subject of stereotypes
variously centering on undersexualization, oversexualization, inferiority, and dehumanization
due to a perceived lack of feeling. My guiding questions in this chapter are: What new
perspectives on Asianness are contemporary Asian Canadian artists bringing to musical
theatre? How are the pre-existing stereotypes and “phantasms of orientalness” (Shimakawa
17) both emerging and being subverted in new musical theatre? Chinese Canadian music
theatre creator Kevin Wong speaks to the need for more Asian perspectives by saying:
I think it's this interesting thing where for a long time, it's either been pieces by white
people about our Asianness, mostly as a feature, or as an ‘othering’ thing, we're the
exotic world of it. [...] I think we have yet to build a canon in which we are fully
understood for the breadth of our experience, and that can only be done through
multiple works over time.
To explore how Asian representation has evolved from the commercial musical theatre I
investigated in Chapter Two, I turn to casting practices and new musical productions. I look
at the casting of Musical Stage Co’s Next To Normal in Toronto, ON, Stephanie Sy’s casting
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as Ariel in The Little Mermaid in Regina, Saskatchewan, and Kelsey Verzotti as Anne Shirley
in Anne of Green Gables: The Musical in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. For new
musicals, I look at Kevin Wong’s Soft Magical Tofu Boys and Aaron Jan and Alaska B’s
MEAT.
CASTING TERMS AND PRACTICES
The casting of Asian performers in North American musicals has historically been
limited due to the sparse number of productions that feature specifically Asian roles, and the
racial bias that sets whiteness as the default. The latter is demonstrated in Latonja Sinckler’s
article “And the Oscar Goes to; Well, It Can't Be You, Can It: A Look at Race-Based Casting
and How It Legalizes Racism, Despite Title VII Laws,” in which Sinckler examines a study
by Professor Russell K. Robinson:
Professor Robinson performed a three-month study of breakdowns posted on the
Internet Movie Database (IMDb) between June 1 and August 31, 2006, and found
that 22.5% of the breakdowns identified a character as white; 8.1% as black; 5.2% as
Latino; 4.3% as Asian; and 0.5% as Native American. Only 8.5% of the breakdowns
were listed as open to all ethnicities, and 50.9% did not list the character’s race.
While it may seem optimistic that a little more than 50% of the roles did not have
racial characteristics attached to them, the industry consensus is that white is implied
when a race is omitted. Applying this logic, approximately 73.4% of all roles are
intended for Caucasians, though this rises to almost 82% if one includes ‘any
ethnicity’ roles in the calculation. (859)
While this study looks specifically at film and TV, it applies to theatre casting as well with
the “industry consensus” that whiteness is the default. That said, as the industry develops,
and conversations around diversity, inclusion, and representation expand, audiences and
performers alike are asking if and why these works need to be white. Kevin Wong speaks to
this saying: “As a spectator, I’ve mostly seen Asians cast in roles that aren't necessarily
conceptualized for Asian people.” For Asian performers, being cast in roles beyond those
explicitly marked as Asian is important for representation given the lack of Asian-specific
content. In this section on casting, I look at Asian performers in historically white
roles/productions—meaning roles/productions that have typically been cast with white
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performers despite the lack of a specified race (white or otherwise) in either the text or
character breakdowns.
As conversations around casting have expanded, the terminology around
“non-traditional” casting has emerged with the Actors' Equity Association introducing this
language, and founding the Non-Traditional Casting Project in 1986 “under the leadership of
Harry Newman and Clinton Turner Davis to promote the inclusion of racial and ethnic
minorities, women, and the disabled in all areas of theatrical activity—performing, directing,
designing, managing, producing” (Pao 4). Claire Syler and Daniel Banks, alongside the other
authors in Casting A Movement: The Welcome Table Initiative, “suggest that casting is a way
to invite more people to the table so that the full breadth of US identities can be reflected
onstage. This premise also suggests that casting is inherently a political act. Because an
actor’s embodied presence both communicates a dramatic narrative and evokes cultural
assumptions associated with skin color, gender, sexuality, and ability, casting choices are
never neutral” (Syler 4). Thus, I argue that through “non-traditional” casting, representations
of Asianness are expanded through actors being able to tell a wider breadth of stories and
being perceived beyond stereotypes.
In scholarship on casting, many different terms are used. For my purposes, I follow
Angela Pao, Daniel Banks, and Clare Syler in my use of the term “non-traditional” casting.
The aspects of “non-traditional” casting that Banks focuses on are the same ones that I look
to as well: “color-blind” and “race conscious” (what I refer to as “colour-conscious”) casting
(Syler 13).31 Angela Pao, in the Introduction to No Safe Spaces: Re-casting Race, Ethnicity,
and Nationality in American Theater, defines “color-blind casting” as “actors [who] are cast
without regard to their race or ethnicity; the best actor is cast in the role” (Pao 4). Pao refers
to “color-blind casting” as falling under the umbrella term of “non-traditional” casting. While
“non-traditional” casting may sometimes seem solely positive and progressive, it also
signifies the existence of “traditional” casting, which ultimately comes from “‘ritualized
repetition’ of certain social norms” (Butler qtd in Syler 14)––the same way stereotypes have
31 Both terms “race-conscious” and “colour-conscious” refer to the same thing. I use the term
“colour-conscious” because that is the term I originally heard years back and have been using. That is also the
term that some of my interviewees use. Additionally, I believe that the vocabulary of “colour” is clear in how
this casting practice revolves around the visuality of the racialized body, even narrowing into how light or dark
someone’s skin is. Additionally, I think of “colorism” prevalent in the casting of Blackness that privileges
lighter skinned folks over darker skinned folks.
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emerged. “Traditional” casting refers to a white default way of casting and a “multilayered
history of viewing ([that revolves around] which bodies have historically been made objects
[and] subjects, which bodies have historically been allowed to be spectators, etc.)”
(Thompson 13). “Traditional” casting therefore determines white bodies as able to be and do
anything, while non-white bodies are relegated to stereotypes.
As a supposedly progressive or “inclusive” casting method, “color-blind casting” has
been significantly debated by BIPOC scholars. “Color-blind casting” can actually be very
harmful as “blindness to difference is often blindness to inequality, just as ‘inclusion’ can
often be on terms that reinforce existing hierarchies” (Thompson xvi). It is not possible to be
blind to one’s race, and “to erase color is to erase identity and legacy; to recognize and
appreciate our differences is to know and honor one another’s histories and stories” (Syler
15). Banks highlights the difference between “color-blind” and “color-conscious” by quoting
Jocelyn Brown’s talk at the 2012 Black Theatre Network conference:
The phrase [color-blind casting] has mushroomed to enormous proportions. Use of
the term has become problematic. To complicate matters further, much of what is
labeled color-blind theater is, in actuality, color-conscious theater (Syler 15).
Banks adds that “unless productions do as most major symphony orchestras and audition
people behind a curtain, color-blind casting is neither possible nor desirable” (Syler 15). In
other words, true “color-blind” casting is impossible and ineffective, while
“colour-conscious” casting is more intentional and takes into account the racial visuality that
audiences are unable to ignore. With an understanding of the terms “non-traditional casting,”
“color-blind casting,” and “colour-conscious casting,” I now turn to Musical Stage Co’s 2019
production of Next To Normal and the impact it had on Asian representation in regards to
mental illness.
Next to Normal (Musical Stage Co, Toronto, 2019)
Next to Normal is a rock musical with book and lyrics by Brian Yorkey and music by
Tom Kitt. The show opened on Broadway in 2009 and won a number of Tony Awards, as
well as the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The story follows a suburban family with a mother
who struggles with bipolar disorder. Next to Normal deals with themes of mental illness,
grief, medical ethics, and prescription drug abuse. The musical follows the Goodman family
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as they navigate through Diana's (the mother) “delusional bipolar disorder” (Yorkey). In
addition to Diana, we follow Dan (her husband) and Natalie (their daughter). Throughout the
musical, we see Diana dealing with hallucinations of her dead son Gabe, who she now
imagines as an 18-year-old, despite his death as a baby. Diana, and subsequently her family,
are seen dealing with her constant change in medications, attempted suicide, and even ECT
(Electroconvulsive therapy/shock therapy). Natalie is Dan and Diana's high strung, high
achieving, genius sixteen-year-old daughter who falls in love with stoner schoolmate Henry.
Natalie eventually turns to self-medicating with her mother's pills to deal with the stress and
anxiety that emerges from her expectations and perfectionism, as well as the pressure of
having to cope with her mother's erratic condition. By the end of the musical, Diana decides
to leave the family and live with her parents in order to contend with her own grief and come
to a more hopeful management of her mental illness.
In 2019, The Musical Stage Company (Musical Stage Co) in Toronto, ON did a
“colour-conscious” cast production that was referenced a number of times in my interviews
as one of the standout moments of Asian representation in contemporary musical theatre.32
Thus, I use this production as an example of the impact of “colour-conscious” casting,
particularly the importance it has had to Asian representations of mental illness and
emotionality. This “colour-consciousness” is significant because, historically, Asian
characters have been written by non-Asians as unfeeling while default white characters have
been afforded the privilege of a range of emotions. In light of that, the casting of Asians in
non-Asian specific works such as Next to Normal resists the notion of the unfeeling and
expressionless Asian that comes out of stereotypes like the coolie and the China Doll, while
also providing space for stigmatized conversations about mental health in the Asian
community.
Directed by acclaimed Black Canadian actor and director Philip Akin, Musical Stage
Co’s Next to Normal “specifically went for a mixed family dynamic with one Black parent,
one Asian parent, and mixed kids” (K. Wong). Kevin Wong, who was working with Musical
Stage Co at the time, speaks to this decision saying: “[It] was sort of patterned after East
West Players' version that came first. Because I worked at [Musical Stage Co] at the time, I
32 “The Musical Stage Company is the largest and leading charitable musical theatre company in Canada.
Established in 2004 as Acting Up Stage Company, we strive to make Canada a leader in musical theatre”
(“Mandate & History”).
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had done some of the research on whether it had been done before and how it had been done
when we were making the decision to cast it that way” (K. Wong). Chinese Canadian
playwright and director Aaron Jan, who also worked on the show, speaks to the intentional
casting decision made by Akin: “Phillip really wanted a mixed Asian-Black family. He really,
really wanted that, and the experience of representation” (Jan). The cast included Filipino
Canadian Ma-Anne Dionisio, famous for Les Misérables and Miss Saigon, playing the lead
role of Diana, African Nova Scotian actor Troy Adams as her husband Dan, Filipino
Canadian actor Brandon Antonio as her son Gabe, and Filipino-Chinese Canadian actress
Stephanie Sy as her daughter Natalie. Sy speaks to this production and the experience as
being “a huge deal”:
It was such a big, big deal. I remember auditioning for this show at MTC (Royal
Manitoba Theatre Company) [...] and I knew I wasn't going to get it. I just knew it
wasn't going to happen for me unless Ma-Anne Dionisio was playing Diana. [...]
Then I put up on a vision board that I was going to do Next to Normal with Ma-Anne
one day, and this was in 2009, I want to say. [...] [Years later I had an audition for Life
After with Musical Stage Co and] I got an email back saying that they were going a
different way, but they were just so excited to have met me, and that we'll find
something to work on in the future. Then not too long after, Mitchell [Marcus] had
emailed me to let me know that they were doing a production of Next to Normal with
Ma-Anne, and they wanted to see me for Natalie, and I freaked the fuck out. I was
like, “okay, I made this happen, I made it happen, I know I did.” I wasn't able to be in
Toronto, so I sent in a tape, and luckily got the part.
As Sy points out, casting what would be perceived as a biologically racially “logical” family
proved to be both a barrier and an opportunity. Sy speaks about “knowing” that she could
only be cast as Natalie, the daughter, if another Asian woman was cast as the mother. I read
this as an example of the “traditional” thinking that permeates casting and, therefore,
disregards the possibility of a transracial adoptive family or anything other than the
normative, nuclear, (often monoracial) biological family. With the intention of creating a
mixed-race family in Next to Normal, Akin chose to disrupt “the codes audiences are
accustomed to utilizing, the conventions they are used to recognizing, at a theatrical event”
(Bennett 104). As Syler and Banks state: “casting is inherently a political act; because an
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actor’s embodied presence both communicates a dramatic narrative and evokes cultural
assumptions associated with appearance, skin color, gender, sexuality, and ability, casting
choices are never neutral” (Syler 4). Inevitably, audiences visually read the bodies presented
on stage based on their own experiences and the media that they consume, which typically
has had a “bias towards dominant cultural groups, which include, but are not limited to,
Eurocentric, able-bodied, and male-dominated narratives” (Syler 4). This production of Next
to Normal disrupts the dominant narrative of repeated Asian stereotypes by putting Black and
Asian bodies in a story that has rarely been imagined as non-white.
As mentioned, this “colour conscious” casting of Musical Stage Co’s Next to Normal
is particularly significant due to the historical stereotypes around Asians as unfeeling, as well
as the stigma surrounding mental health in Asian communities, which have not traditionally
been forthcoming in discussing mental illness. According to Dr. Brandon Ito, a child and
adolescent psychiatrist and assistant clinical professor of psychiatry and biobehavioral
sciences at UCLA, “Asian Americans are 50% less likely than other racial groups to seek
mental health services” (qtd in Schlossberg). This is due to traditional cultural beliefs and
how “mental health challenges are viewed as an individual problem or weakness and talking
openly about sadness, disappointment or depression is rarely encouraged” (Ito qtd in
Schlossberg). In Elizabeth J. Kramer et al.’s article “Cultural factors influencing the mental
health of Asian Americans,” they discuss a number of factors that contribute to the lack of
diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders within Asian communities. These factors include
language barriers, age, gender, family structure and intergenerational issues, religious beliefs
and spirituality, and the aforementioned traditional beliefs about mental illness.33 Kramer
says: “In the traditional belief system, mental illnesses are caused by a lack of harmony of
emotions or, sometimes, by evil spirits. [...] Some elderly Asian Americans share the
Buddhist belief that problems in this life are most likely related to transgressions committed
in a past life” (228).34 Additionally, the concept of “saving face”—“the ability to preserve
34 Kramer et al. point specifically to Chinese, Japanese, and Korean cultures and their “traditional belief
systems.” The Chinese belief that “mental illness [is] caused by lack of harmony of emotions or by evil spirits.”
The Japanese belief that “mental illness [is] caused by evil spirits.” The Korean belief that “mental illness [is]
caused by disruption of harmony within [an] individual or by ancestral spirit coming back to haunt patient[s]
because of past bad behavior” (228).
33 Kramer et al. acknowledge the “cultural variability among groups and heterogeneity within groups” which
lead to their categorical factors having “differing effects, depending on the individual’s degree of acculturation,
socioeconomic status, and immigration status.” Kramer et al. focus on “new immigrants, who comprise 2.6% of
the US population, and those who are more traditionally oriented” (227).
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[one’s] public appearance, [in addition to the public appearance of the family,] for the sake of
community propriety” (Kramer 228)—is “extremely important” in most Asian cultures.
While Asian cultural behaviours and attitudes have an effect on mental health, there are
factors beyond that as well. Oftentimes the mental health issues of Asians are depicted as
solely cultural and to be solved within their own communities instead of a problem that
contains roots in institutional systems and society as a whole. Eng and Han note this in
Racial Melancholia explaining:
When Asian American students seek therapy, their mental health issues are
overwhelmingly perceived as intergenerational familial conflicts. [...] The segregation
of Asian American mental health issues into the domain of cultural difference covers
over structural questions of institutional violence and inequality, as well as histories
of whiteness as property, as they circulate both inside and outside the therapeutic
space of the clinic. (52-53)
Asian Americans are constantly being made perpetual foreigners and forced to navigate
integration or assimilation in order to fit in—an act that complicates one’s sense of identity
and individuality (later seen in Wong’s Soft Magical Tofu Boys). While not explicitly written
about in Next to Normal, the “non-traditional” Asian American casting adds a new
interpretation to the musical which confronts preconceived notions around Asianness, mental
health, and emotionality.
Through the reception of this production, I highlight the impact that this particular
Asian casting of a mental health story had on Asian audience members. In asking Aaron Jan
about his first and/or most memorable experience with Asian representation in musical
theatre, he brought up this 2019 production:
I've seen Next to Normal many times. I was one of the kids who grew up with it, and
when I saw it, when I saw Alice Ripley do it, I was like, “okay, I'm not really
emotionally engaged. This is fine.” But seeing an Asian woman who looked like my
mother do the songs, I was a mess because mental illness is not something to talk
about in the community. Also, Ma-Anne hitting those notes and doing things like that,
that was the first time I think I saw Asians in theater, and I body-wept. I full body
sobbed. [...] I think the experience of seeing someone who looked like my mother
have a mental breakdown on stage was incredibly moving to me.
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Jan speaks to a new personal engagement with the show due to its Asian casting––a renewed
meaning in the musical due to explicitly seeing one’s own community members inside of
these stories. Wayne Leung’s review of the production on the blog Mooney on Theatre
echoes these sentiments, noting that it is an “examination of how mental illness takes a
disproportionate toll on Asian-American families” due to the stigma associated with mental
illness in Asian cultures. On a performance level, this production insists that Asian
performers can be expressive and emotional. In Galella’s “Feeling Yellow,” she references
Nancy Wang Yuen’s citation of a casting director saying: “Asians are a challenge to cast
because most casting directors feel as though they’re not very expressive. They’re very shut
down in their emotions” (qtd in Galella 70). Next to Normal requires a range of emotions
from the actors and a deeply emotional, vulnerable journey therefore through the casting of
Asians in this production, the stereotype and monolithic stereotype of Asians as unfeeling is
challenged.
ASIANS IN HISTORICALLY WHITE ROLES
Seeing Asian actors and characters on stage allows the Asian community to both
identify with the story as well as work towards imagining unlimited possibilities for
themselves and their careers. Personally, when I see Asian actors in roles that have typically
been cast white, I feel optimistic that work might exist beyond the stereotypes ascribed to
Asian bodies. There exists the possibility that I can be something other than Miss Saigon and
Flower Drum Song. Through “non-traditional” casting, there is an integration of Asianness
on stage in which the performer’s Asian body is not “othered.” As a Chinese Canadian, there
are a number of “Western” stories that I look up to and relate to, sometimes more than
anything explicitly Asian. In looking at Stephanie Sy as Ariel in The Little Mermaid, I argue
that when Asian performers take on historically white roles, they are able to portray a variety
of stories that have historically only been granted to white performers. In looking at Kelsey
Verzotti as Anne in Anne of Green Gables, I argue that a half-Chinese, mixed-race Anne
highlights an overlooked history of Chinese people on Prince Edward Island.
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Asian Ariel in The Little Mermaid
In the last ten years, racialized Ariels in The Little Mermaid have been a point of
contention, beginning with Japanese American actress Diana Huey playing Ariel in the U.S.
National Tour production in 2016, and then again with Black actress Halle Bailey as Ariel in
the 2023 Disney live-action remake of the animated film. Audiences (primarily internet
commenters) have expressed heated and racist opinions on Ariel being a person of colour in
2016 and again in 2023. Luckily, in Canada, Stephanie Sy did not experience that same
racism during her time at Regina’s Globe Theatre in 2017:
I did see the pushback [around Diana Huey in The Little Mermaid] and I thought it
was so silly. [...] But for [my] experience, there was zero pushback. I was shocked to
see that there was. [...] I think it's pretty ridiculous in its specificity of what the show
is. I feel like it might be a little different if it was more realistic, like with
non-mystical creatures. [...] But Stephanie Graham, the director, didn't make a deal of
it. There was no deal to be made. [...] And no one else did either. [...] I honestly didn't
think about it while it was happening. There were comments that I got from some
friends that were like, “so are they going to give you red hair?” And I said, “of
course, they're going to give me red hair.” And they're like, “well, why?” They
questioned it as if, “if you're an Asian Ariel, why would they give you red hair?”
Because Ariel has red hair, because that's the defining feature of Ariel. I wouldn't
want her to have black hair. It's part of the character, the colors are like what make
Ariel, Ariel. That was something that sticks in my head, because I feel that comments
like that make me feel like you are othering me. Even though it was trying to be in
support of me and my Asianness in this white role, you telling me that I shouldn't
have red hair says that when they're white, they should have red hair. So that's the
only weird feeling I got around that.
While Sy speaks to the lack of explicit media criticism or negative reception of her Asianness
in the role, it was obviously a factor that people noticed—evidenced by the comment about
her hair. This comment from her friends also demonstrates the limited ideas around
Asianness and Asian visuality as they could not imagine an Asian person with red hair. The
characteristics of Asianness that are subconscious in this interaction have roots in how
Asians have been represented through yellowface with dark black hair, almond shaped eyes,
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and yellowed skin. In regards to how an Asian body may change the role of Ariel, she is a
character that partially feeds into the China Doll stereotype because she’s beautiful, young,
naïve, and silent (when she gives up her voice in exchange for human legs). That said, she is
also strong and passionate in the way she goes against her father to explore a new world. As
a character who is coded and normally seen as white, she is afforded the opportunity to be
complex, make mistakes, and ultimately receive a happy ending. In asking why these
implicitly white characters are afforded individuality, I look to Leonard M. Baynes’ chapter
“White Out: The Absence and Stereotyping of People of Color by the Broadcast Networks in
Prime Time Entertainment Programming,” which describes the individuality and complexity
privileged to white folks and white characters:
Whites [...] do not have to worry about White media absences or stereotypes for
several reasons. First, few media genres exist where Whites are wholly absent. It is
more often that the White images dominate. [...] Second, there are very few negative
stereotypes against Whites as a group. Whites often are seen more as individuals
rather than as members of a group. Thus, if there is a negative depiction of a White
person, it would be seen as related only to that particular White individual and not
ascribed to Whites as a group. The negative stereotypes that do refer to Whites are
usually isolated to some specific group of Whites—such as those who live in trailers,
those who are from Appalachia, and those who might have certain southern European
origins. These stereotypes do not apply to all Whites as a class or group, just to some
particular subcategories. In other words, it is not the “Whiteness” of the group
members that account for the stereotype against them, but some other perceived
characteristic. (233)
This understanding of whiteness in media, and perhaps theatre, contrasts the dominant,
repetitive Asian stereotypes I have looked at in the previous two chapters. Where Asians are
only understood through Orientalism, stereotypes, and as a monolithic group, white people
are seen as individuals.
A dominant discussion around the role of Ariel in particular is the element of
suspension of disbelief in the theatre. If an audience’s suspension of disbelief can allow them
to accept the existence of mermaids, then why is an Asian or Black Ariel a problem?
Returning to the conversation around “colorblind casting,” there seems to be an issue of
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racial realism and logic that persists in shows that don’t involve a specificity of race. For
example, due to the fact that Ariel in the original 1989 animated film appeared white and was
voiced by white actress Jodi Benson, she has been canonized as white with many audiences
unable to imagine her otherwise. And while some casting, such as Ariel, can be “colorblind,”
there are certain historical considerations required for other pieces. For example in something
like Arthur Miller’s All My Sons and the Grease prequel series, Grease: Rise of the Pink
Ladies, shows that take place in 1947 and 1954 respectively, “color-blind casting” is
problematic and “a form of erasure” of racism as it “forc[es] audience members to make a
subconscious decision to accept the fact that [the play] takes place in a fictional, idyllic
America where racism never existed” (Newton).35 Artist Omari Newton speaks to the casting
of the 2019 Broadway revival of All My Sons in which one of the main characters’
neighbours, a white man, is married to a Black woman, which Newton explains would be “a
very big deal in late 1940s Ohio.” There were also a set of siblings in the play, George and
Ann, who are cast as Black and white, which Newton writes is “not only [...] simply
confusing on a basic level, but the implications of this dynamic raised even more profound
questions about the exceedingly progressive politics that must have existed in the world of
this play—questions that by definition could not be explored because they were never meant
to be in the original script that saw the entire cast as white.” Newton speaks of how, in certain
shows, the casting can bring up a whole new set of politics and issues that were not
accounted for in the default white writing of the piece. However, in something like The Little
Mermaid, a fantasy genre musical, “colorblind casting is somewhat fallacious because there’s
no real reason why [a mermaid couldn’t] be played by a non-white actor” (Wilson). Of Sy’s
casting as Ariel, I ask her if there was any reception or notice of her Asianness, and she tells
me she doesn’t remember:
If there was, they obviously didn't make a huge impact. And that seems like
something I would remember. I just remember so many kids being wonderful and so
supportive and so ecstatic, and there were honestly a lot of white kids. I don't even
35 Brandon David Wilson, in his article “Redacting Racism,” speaks to the colorblind casting in the Grease
prequel series Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies, a show that takes places around the 1950s in which the Civil
Rights Movement and desegregation was top of mind in reality but not in the show. Wilson writes: “The shows
and films embracing this new approach to historical fiction and fantasy aren’t so much ignoring the races of the
actors they’re casting as redacting the existence of racism. The non-white characters in the Grease prequel
know they aren’t white and refer to it often. It’s just that the world they’re living in is not plagued by the same
racial inequality we know—until the writers decide otherwise.”
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recall really seeing a lot of BIPOC kids. There would be a couple comments [from
friends who came to see the show saying] how important it is and little reminders like
that, but it really wasn't made a deal of at all.
There is a beautiful kind of anonymity in Sy’s race not being relevant to this show. Or
perhaps it wasn’t explicitly stated or shared with her in how it was received, but this
exemplifies the capability for a show like The Little Mermaid to be cast with people of
colour. I remember seeing the news about Diana Huey, and perhaps about Sy shortly after as
well, and being excited that Asian performers were being “welcomed to the table” (Syler and
Banks). Castings like this set a precedent for Asian performers in these roles, as well as
starting conversations about why audiences see this character exclusively as white.
Asian Mixed-Race Anne Shirley in Anne of Green Gables: The Musical
My final example of “colour-blind” casting, and a particularly Canadian one, is
Kelsey Verzotti as Anne Shirley in Anne of Green Gables: The Musical. Anne of Green
Gables is often seen as the most iconic piece of Canadian media. This “colour-blind” casting
allows the opportunity for Asians who have never seen themselves in this story, on Prince
Edward Island, or in Canadian culture more broadly, to identify via Verzotti’s mixed-race
Asian Canadian body.
Anne of Green Gables: The Musical has a book by Donald Harron, lyrics by Donald
Harron and Norman Campbell, and music by Norman Campbell. For decades, starting in
1965, it has been a staple of the Charlottetown Festival on Prince Edward Island. The
musical takes place in Avonlea, a fictional small town on Prince Edward Island in the late
1800s. It follows the Cuthbert siblings, Matthew and Marilla, as they set out to adopt a boy to
help out with farm work but end up with a dramatic, imaginative, feisty little red haired
orphan girl named Anne Shirley. We watch “as she captures the hearts and minds of her
newfound family and neighbors in the small farming community of Avonlea” (“Anne of
Green Gables - the Musical”).
While the casting of mixed-race Chinese Canadian actress Kelsey Verzotti as Anne
Shirley might be seen as one of those non-historically accurate “colorblind” castings that
Newton speaks of, it actually highlights a lost and overlooked history of the Chinese on
Prince Edward Island. The Chinese, while few, have a history on Prince Edward Island that
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dates back as early as 1850. On July 30, 1850, half-Chinese, half-Portuguese woman Louisa
Maria Hooper arrived on Prince Edward Island with her family, which included her British
husband William J.P. Hooper. Hung-Min Chiang, author of Chinese Islanders: Making a
Home in the New World, found Louisa Maria Hooper’s presence from a brief mention of her
in Henry Cundall’s diary and the 1881 Canada Census.36 Born “Louiza Maria Esperanza,”
Hooper’s birth place was listed as “China,” but was likely to have been Macao, a Portuguese
colony. She is an overlooked Chinese immigrant due to her not fitting “the preconceived
notion of the nineteenth-century Chinese immigrant” (Chiang 18)—in that she was not a
man, the head of a business, or “famous or infamous enough to become a newspaper
headline” (Chiang 18). Additionally, she had no Chinese name and “she came during an era
when no Chinese immigrants were expected” (Chiang 18). Chiang writes that: “As a woman,
her life in the private sphere of home and family was inscrutable to most historical
documentation” (18). That said, Chiang writes that Louisa and William Hooper had nine
surviving children, seven of whom were born on the Island. They lived on a farm at “the very
end of a sparsely populated country road” (19) and later moved to a “48-acre farm on the
main road in Marie Bridge” (19), similar to the farm town in Anne of Green Gables. Louisa
Maria Hooper stayed on Prince Edward Island right up until her death in 1888. Chiang notes
that “no full-blooded Chinese women were reported living on the Island until the 1930s” (32)
but following Hooper, the next Chinese immigrants to arrive on the island were laundrymen
in the summer of 1891. The unnamed pair opened the laundry “Wah Kee” on July 7, 1891 but
it was quickly closed 3 months later, to which Chiang notes: “The story of the first pair of
Chinese was indicative of the usual story of Chinese immigration on Prince Edward Island in
the early years: they came, they were seen, and they departed” (22). Through the 1890s and
into the early 1900s, the pattern of single, male, Chinese laborers continued on PEI but in far
fewer numbers than in Vancouver or Toronto. Despite the numbers, this does open the
possibility of the existence of mixed-race Chinese kids on PEI. To quote Chiang:
Tradition-minded Chinese men would much prefer taking a Chinese wife, but when it
was rendered impossible by circumstances, they would not shy away from marrying
non-Chinese women. However, the legal barriers and social taboos against it here
36 Henry Cundall was a land surveyor who kept a diary from 1854 to 1909.
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were such that there were no documented cases of a union between a Chinese man
and a “white” local woman until the 1940s. (32)
This historicization of the Chinese on PEI, and the existence of mixed-race Chinese kids
through the Hoopers, highlights the historical possibility of a mixed-race Chinese orphan in
the 1890s. Anne’s family background in the musical is described as the following: “Parents,
deceased. Father, Walter Shirley, teacher of agriculture and rapid calculation at Bolingbroke
Continuation School. Mother, Bertha Shirley, housewife” (Act 1 Scene 5). Setting this
against the history of Louisa Maria Hooper and her husband, a mixed-race Chinese Anne
could very well be possible. She could, in theory, be one of the Hooper children. Another
possibility, grounded in historical reality, is that Anne could be orphaned due to her mixed
raceness and the “social taboos” around interracial relationships. Despite there not being
documentation to point to a real case, there exists the possibility that one of these single
Chinese laborers had relations with a white local while on PEI. Throughout the musical,
Anne is often criticized and bullied for her background as an orphan (which with a POC body
could be read in a racialized context)—seen as lower class than many of those in
Avonlea—as well as for her looks (which could also be read racialized and ‘othering’) and
“carrot” coloured hair, often noted as ugly.37 A lyric that draws a parallel of how Anne is seen
and treated to the impact of her interracial identity is in the song “Did You Hear?” in which
everyone in the town is gossiping about Anne after her fight with male classmate Gilbert.
The lyric is as follows: “We don’t want her kind in Avonlea” (Act 1 Sc 11). In a
non-racialized reading of Anne, this refers to her temper, her behaviour, and her status as an
“outsider,” but in a racialized reading, this can be linked to histories of racism. This lyric also
echoes the sentiment from an 1891 letter to the editor of The Daily Examiner on PEI that
reads: “I know considerable of this class of people, and in every case their presence in a
community is undesirable” (Chiang 21).
Turning to Verzotti’s casting in 2022 for the Charlottetown Festival production, this
was used as a major draw for media promotions and framed as “historic” since she was the
first Asian Canadian to play Anne on PEI. In media, alongside this headline of her being a
“monumental” Anne, was Verzotti’s recounting of a racist experience in school:
37 MRS LYNDE: They didn't pick you out for your looks, that's sure and certain. Come over here, let me have a
look at you. Did you ever see such freckles, and hair as red as carrots! (Act 1 Sc 7)
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During my time at theatre school, I was once told by a teacher that I would never be
in the production of Anne of Green Gables in Charlottetown, PEI because so many
Japanese people go to the island to visit and they wouldn’t want to see one of their
own on stage. This comment was horrendous for several reasons, one being that I’m
not even Japanese. The teacher then proceeded to sing a song from the show in an
Asian accent, and said “I would pay to see you in a red wig.” (qtd in “Kelsey
Verzotti”).
This perceived importance around the visuality of Asianness being tied to hair colour is once
again highlighted. Asian performers, as seen with Miss Saigon, have been confined solely to
explicit renderings of Asianness which have now led to the (white) inability to imagine a
world with a red-haired Atlantic Asian Canadian. In theatre casting, there is a strong
emphasis on visuality and a fixed notion of what an Asian person looks like, which comes
from historic Orientalist tropes. Similarly to Sy’s experience of being asked if she would
have red hair as Ariel, Verzotti experienced a micro-aggressive interaction around playing
Anne:
I went to one event [with] Emma [Rudy], she plays Diana [...] and she played Anne
right before me, and we went to this book signing and the author's friend or assistant
was talking to us and Emma introduced me and was like, “this is Kelsey, she plays
Anne,” and the girl was like, “wait, what? That makes no sense. You should be Anne
and you should be Diana.” Just little things like that that [remind me] “oh, for some
people that's crazy that this beautiful blonde would be a friend or that an Asian person
could play Anne Shirley.” That's just weird for some people.
This “weirdness” of seeing a mixed-race Asian Anne Shirley in a Canada that likes to boast
its diversity is also evidence of the work that needs to be done in media and theatre. Verzotti,
a mixed-race Asian Canadian who identifies as half-Chinese, speaks to the universality of
Anne’s story and how it should not be limited to white folks:
So many people can relate to feeling different or that they don't fit in. It would be
great for children to see, maybe children who are Asian as well, to see an Asian
performer playing this part. It'll just sort of open up all of these doors to them because
I know when I was growing up, I didn't always see Asian leads in musicals when I
went to see shows with my parents. (qtd in Ross)
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Verzotti reflects on how she relates to Anne via her feeling of difference, in addition to what
she admires about the character:
I like [Anne’s] ability to speak her mind and ask questions that trigger people’s
imagination. Mostly, I resonate with her desire to fit in and be accepted. (qtd in Cyr)
With this attitude towards diversity and representation, Verzotti is a role model for Asian
representation in Canadian musical theatre as “the first woman of colour to be cast in the role
that has been played by 19 other actresses” (qtd in “Kelsey Verzotti”). In my own interview
with Verzotti, she spoke of how much pressure it is “to be the first of anything”:
There's this pressure that you better be good, or the world will be like, “that's why we
don't hire Asian people.” Or “that's why we don't change it up, and it should be a
white person.” So I had that pressure riding on me.
This theme of extensive pressure on actors of colour, and additionally the pressure to succeed
within the Asian community itself, is recurring. Asians, adhering to the Model Minority
Myth, are expected to succeed “or else,” therefore leaving no room for failure. Anne’s
experience of being an outsider within the play is universal to many people, but for Asians
and mixed-race Asians, Verzotti’s embodiment of the role highlights it in a new, specific, and
even historically relevant way. As we continue to see BIPOC folks on stage, and in lead roles
especially, we will hopefully normalize the possibility of work, characteristics, and
expectations beyond the historic stereotypes used to keep Asians complacent and invisible.
Both of these casting decisions—Ariel in The Little Mermaid and Anne in Anne of
Green Gables—may fall into the category of “color-blind casting” because neither Ariel nor
Anne’s ethnicities are particularly relevant to the storyline. That said, being “blind” to the
visual markers of race is impossible, therefore these actors and these stories are inevitably
read onto by audience members as a personal interpretation based on that audience member’s
experience, identity, and preconceived notions. For myself as an Asian spectator and
performer, when seeing an Asian in a historically white show, whether the actor’s Asianness
is forefronted or not, I see their work on-stage as inspiring. While potentially not as impactful
for non-Asian audience members, this creates small steps towards the exposure and
acceptance of Asian performers. Representation through “non-traditional” casting allows for
non-white bodies to be seen through the nuanced and heterogeneous experiences that have
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historically been reserved for white actors, while layering in additional nuances in regards to
a racialized body.
NEW ASIAN CANADIAN MUSICAL THEATRE
As seen through musicals like The King and I, Flower Drum Song (in its original
iteration), and Miss Saigon, Asianness has been portrayed through a white lens—“pieces by
white people about our Asianness, mostly as a feature, or as an ‘othering’ thing” (K.Wong).
In looking at the current theatre landscape, I focus on new Canadian musical theatre written
by Asian Canadian creators. As Filipino Canadian performer and choreographer Julio
Fuentes says: “Asian stories are definitely coming up. It's great to see that more of our stories
are being put out there. [...] Let us tell our stories.” In this section, I argue that new musicals
written by Asian Canadian creators provide heterogeneous perspectives that contribute to the
representation of a breadth of Asian experiences grounded in multiplicity. To demonstrate
this, I examine how Kevin Wong’s Soft Magical Tofu Boys, and Aaron Jan and Alaska B’s
MEAT present the Model Minority and Asian femininity in ways that confront the kinds of
Asian representation found in musicals written by white writers.
Soft Magical Tofu Boys
Kevin Wong is someone whom I consider one of the biggest names in Canadian
musical theatre through his work with Toronto’s Musical Stage Company and Sheridan
College. In my interview with Wong, he self-identified as a Queer, Chinese Canadian creator,
and spoke to one of the reasons he had yet to really create an Asian-centered work:
Musical-wise it felt daunting and like untrodden territory so it kind of felt like, ‘oh
God, how do you even start?’ And also I always felt like there was a divide because I
was trying to prove myself as a musical theatre writer at the time, and I suppose
probably trying to avoid getting shoehorned into something. But also, as a musical
theatre creator, all of the mentorship and [opportunities] were in white-dominated
spaces.
This speaks to a shared obstacle for Asian artists, as well as other BIPOC artists, in which
there is an additional challenge for breaking into white dominant theatre spaces without
being racially tokenized or forced into stereotypical roles/writings. As seen in previous
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chapters, Asians have been forced to adhere to certain roles and expectations in order to
survive in a white-dominated society. In the contemporary musical theatre I analyze, these
Asian Canadian artists have found ways to express their Asianness, even within these
white-dominated spaces. Their works exemplify an evolution from the portrayal of the exotic
and foreign Asian in the commercial musicals I mapped in Chapter Two, to a complex,
nuanced, and diverse depiction in these new musicals. For Wong, now that he has established
his skills, reputation, and parts of his identity, he is able to present a thought-provoking,
Asian-centered, and deeply personal work entitled Soft Magical Tofu Boys.
Soft Magical Tofu Boys has book, lyrics, and music written by Kevin Wong. At the
time of my writing, four workshops of this piece have already taken place. Three of them in
Canada and one of them at the acclaimed Eugene O’Neill Theater Center in Waterford,
Connecticut, as part of 2024’s National Musical Theatre Conference. The synopsis of Soft
Magical Tofu Boys, as written on Kevin Wong’s website, is as follows:
Three brothers live together. The eldest, Kenneth, is a struggling staff lawyer at a
not-for-profit while raising his younger brothers. Calvin is a morose and withdrawn
young teen who spends all his time making cheesy pop music and dreaming of a pop
star. Little DiDi is 7, and lives almost entirely in a fantasy world where he draws in
the air and dreams of being a mermaid. They all have a useless magical ability: to
conjure the images and sounds they imagine into the air. All three of them are trying
to find a place for a soft magical boy in a hard, unmagical world.
Throughout the musical, we witness each brother contending with various relationships and
identity questions at their respective life stages. For Kenneth, we see his family relationships,
his romantic relationships, and his professional work. In particular, we see him spoken to and
guided by the ghost ancestors (Grandma and others) to suppress his magic and parts of his
identity. For Calvin, we witness him navigate his love of pop music, and search for queer
communities online. For DiDi, we witness him through his colourful, creative magic, and
connections to his peers and teachers. Wong uses these three specific ages to illustrate
growing up and coming to terms with or rejecting parts of oneself and one’s culture. In my
interview with Wong, he speaks to Asians in musical theatre as “untapped,” and his desire to
create something personal and “specific enough that it's interesting and not some monolithic
thing.” As I have learned from Wong during my time at Sheridan in his music theatre writing
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classes, and as he repeats to me in our interview: “Universality is in the specificity. I want to
see really weird, whimsical, specific things.” In Wong’s rationale for this musical, he writes:
We sand off our raw edges, our weird whimsies, our beautiful specificities, in order to
fit in (in my case, queer mannerisms, effeminate poses, femme role models, Chinese
food at school, speaking English only at home, giving up art for ‘stable’ work, etc.). I
wanted to write a piece that asks: What is my own complicity in the eradication of my
specificity, my vulnerability, my individuality, my magic? Can I get back my magic
once it’s ‘gone’?
In this section, I analyze how Soft Magical Tofu Boys problematizes the stereotype of the
Model Minority through portraying the adherence to and perpetuation of it as a survival
method that, in turn, damages the self.
I first look at how Kenneth adheres to the Model Minority stereotype. Kenneth is
described as:
28 years old. Chinese Canadian. Baritenor. Eldest brother in the house. Working at a
not-for-profit legal clinic as a staff lawyer, work is life. Speaks a little bit of Mandarin
with great pronunciation but limited comprehension and vocabulary. Fatalistic sense
of humour. (Wong, Soft Magical Tofu Boys)
Very directly, Kenneth adheres to the Model Minority in his position as 28-year-old staff
lawyer at a not-for-profit “dream job” whose “work is life.” In Scene 2, the ancestors say:
“Make us proud. Become a lawyer,” which illustrates his career as being professional, stable,
and standard by traditional measures therefore making him the hardworking, educated Model
Minority. Eng and Han speak to this:
To this day, widespread social and parental pressures often dictate that Asian
American students must opt for “safe” professional and upwardly mobile
careers—doctor, engineer, lawyer—often at the expense of individual desires and
psychic well-being—“doing well versus feeling well.” (46)
This notion of “doing well versus feeling well” continues through the musical in Kenneth’s
actions and intentions. Kenneth strives to control the magic that he and the boys possess to
ensure their safety, and prevent the tainting of the magic that comes from experiencing
various traumas and disappointments. In the opening song of the musical, the boys are
described as “weak as soft doufu (tofu)” (Scene 1), and the characters explain how it is
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Kenneth’s job to protect the younger ones. In order to protect them, he must ensure that they
fit in. Inevitably, having colourful magic is not fitting in. Kenneth learns that the magic
becomes “tainted” through negative emotions and dark thoughts. Thus, to protect oneself
from tainting the magic, he must close himself off to protect from any trauma. Kenneth sings
about how the brothers are “tragic” and “doomed,” and wonders how to “help detach them
from what will hurt their gentle constitutions” (Scene 1). In an effort to do this, Kenneth
searches for how to “stay unaffected, protected, respected” (Scene 3), and he is guided by the
ancestors to be “anaesthetized, unshakeable, invincible” (Scene 3). To do this, he learns to
use his magic to build walls around himself in order to stay unfeeling and focused. To
Kenneth, this is the only way he can survive. Kenneth shows this to DiDi and tells him that
“inside [the walls] it's quiet, and it's calm, and there's no magic gone askew. All my emotions
fade away, and I am safe” (Scene 4). In learning to build physical walls and detach from his
emotions to become “anaesthetized” and “invincible,” Kenneth adheres to the stereotype of
the unfeeling Model Minority. He echoes the role of the “invincible” Coolie who is seen
laboring without showing any emotion or struggle. In Kenneth’s work at the not-for-profit, he
must go through emotional labor in addition to his legal work; the former he quickly learns to
detach from. Kenneth is taught by the ancestors that he must be the passive, peaceable, quiet,
hardworking Asian, and that he must teach his brothers to do the same. As expressed by Eng
and Han, “Asian Americans are forced to mimic the model minority stereotype in order to be
recognized by mainstream society—in order to be, in order to be seen at all” (45), which is
exactly what we witness in Soft Magical Tofu Boys. Kenneth mimics the Model Minority
stereotype through his day job as a lawyer, his building of walls, and the way he attempts to
control his younger brothers. He does all of this in an effort to be accepted by “mainstream
society” but simultaneously suppresses his individuality which would allow him to truly be
seen.
By Kenneth encouraging the building of walls and blocking out emotions, he
perpetuates the damage that the Model Minority Myth causes. I examine how Kenneth’s
guidance towards numbness and “the norm” negatively affect DiDi and Calvin. DiDi is the
youngest brother, described as:
8 or 9 years old. Chinese. [...] Sometimes seems more like a 5 or 6 year old,
sometimes a bit more like an 11 or 12 year old. Flamboyant, lots of femme energy,
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joy filled, imaginative, often living in a fantasy. Speaks near-fluent Mandarin and
fluent English. Plays violin. (Wong, Soft Magical Tofu Boys)
DiDi, at his young age, has yet to experience anything to harden him to the world the way
Kenneth has. DiDi is not yet trying to fit in as he does not yet have an understanding of a
normative society. He is still wholly and proudly himself, demonstrated through his
“flamboyant, femme energy” and his love of fantasy such as Princess Lunar Scout (a parody
of Sailor Moon). DiDi is joyful and unapologetic. When Kenneth tries to teach him to put up
walls, he responds saying: “No Magic?! Ge ge, thank you but...why would I want to do that?
I love drawing things into the air!” and “That’s...scary, Ge Ge. I don’t like not feeling The
Magic” (Scene 4). To investigate this relationship, I bring back the quote from Eng and Han
about expectations of the Asian American in which success is “often at the expense of
individual desires and psychic well-being—‘doing well versus feeling well’” (46). Kenneth,
in his effort to protect DiDi, is encouraging him to cut off parts of himself, to which DiDi
already knows does not feel right. Kenneth is prioritizing assimilation over his brother’s
“individual desires and psychic well-being,” therefore perpetuating the necessity of being the
Model Minority regardless of what sacrifices they must make. DiDi, in his continued
resistance to Kenneth’s control, later uses his magic to tell his struggling piano teacher a
story that helps her feel less alone. Despite the positive result, Kenneth is concerned and
warns DiDi that: “most of the time people will...misunderstand you... at the very least. And it
could start changing your magic. Poisoning it. [...] I’m serious, keep your magic to yourself”
(Scene 5). Kenneth does this to protect his brother and to help him “be normal” but DiDi
resists the walls, resulting in his suppression at the hands of Kenneth.38
Calvin is the teenage brother who has become a bit more worn down but is still naive
and deeply passionate about music. He is joyful and excited about pop music and uses his
magic to conjure his favourite pop star, Amara Caley (a parody of Mariah Carey). Calvin is
described as:
14-15 years old. Chinese Canadian. [...] Low affect, slouched, withdrawn. Spends
most evenings on the computer, or in his room listening to pop/r&b music, or at the
38 DiDi gets crushed by the walls that Kenneth forces around him, therefore “dying.” The character of DiDi is
the physical manifestation of Kenneth’s inner child, so we witness Kenneth killing his inner child.
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piano writing pop songs and singing to himself. Refuses to speak Mandarin at home
or outside. Plays piano. Hides in baggy clothes. (Wong, Soft Magical Tofu Boys)
Throughout the musical, he is contending with his sexuality and his desire to be a pop
star/singer-songwriter. In comparison to DiDi, Calvin is not as unabashedly himself. He has
already learned to begin assimilating and hiding. Where DiDi speaks Mandarin and English
fluently and incorporates culture into his schoolwork, Calvin has already rejected it and
“refuses to speak Mandarin at home or outside,” as stated in his character description. Calvin
is additionally bullied for his perceived sexuality and therefore is forced to reject and hide it
to fit in. This is seen at school when he is hiding his Amara Caley CD and codes himself for
protection and to fit in. He says: “Shut up! I’m not ‘gay’! Whatever that even is” and
pretends like the Amara Caley CD is for his friend “who’s a girl” (Scene 4). All of this is to
say that Calvin, before Kenneth’s insistence on shutting himself away with walls, is already
having to hide himself to fit into a heterosexual, emotionless normativity that veers towards
the Model Minority. After Kenneth finds Calvin talking to a stranger in a gay-online-chat
room, he bans Calvin from using the computer and scolds him over his “stupid pop star
delusion” (Scene 11). Kenneth cancels Calvin’s music lessons and forces him to quit band.
Kenneth tells Calvin to: “Do something useful. You can join a sports team or come home and
study. No more magic. Put your walls up and stop dreaming. [...] Time to join the real world”
(Scene 11). The emphasis on studying aligns with the Model Minority being educated,
hardworking, and geared towards a stable, professional career often lacking passion. As Eng
and Han write: “The model minority stereotype also delineates Asian Americans as
academically successful but rarely well-rounded” (46). Kenneth’s encouragement towards
academics and away from music adheres to Eng and Han’s explanation of the model minority
and lack of well-roundedness. The push towards joining a sports team is additionally
indicative of wanting to enforce a sense of heteronormativity and traditional masculinity onto
Calvin. Instead of pop music and Amara Caley, which the audience is led to understand as
“feminine” because of Calvin’s explanation that the CD is for his female friend, doing sports
would further prove himself as a Model Minority adhering to “the (masculine) norm.”
Through the latter half of the musical, Calvin comes to a place in which he can only see
himself negatively. He no longer believes in himself or his music which leads to him building
his walls and shutting out his feelings, which the ancestors deem a success. Kenneth notes
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that Calvin is now eerily quiet and Grandma celebrates it—reinforcing the desire around the
peaceable, quiet, unproblematic Model Minority. Through Kenneth’s influence on Calvin, he
perpetuates elements that force Calvin into a state of expressionlessness and silence.
While Kenneth adheres to the Model Minority Myth and perpetuates it onto Calvin
and DiDi in order to ensure their safety and survival, he also facilitates their “eradication” (as
Wong puts it). In order to fit in, Kenneth ends up damaging himself, his brothers, and their
magic. In an Asian Canadian context, Kenneth’s act of blocking out the magic and trying to
control it is a reflection of the assimilation and cultural loss that Asians experience when
trying to survive in a white dominant world. Through the use of the three brothers and their
different ages, we see the stages of this cultural loss and assimilation. Looking at their use of
language in particular, DiDi, the youngest, is fluent in both Mandarin and English, while
Calvin refuses to speak Mandarin, and Kenneth has all but lost his Mandarin language skills.
Eng and Han speak to these patterns of loss in relation to the Model Minority, saying:
For Asian Americans and other people of color, suspended assimilation into
mainstream culture may involve not only debilitating personal consequences;
ultimately, it also constitutes the foundation for a type of national melancholia, a
collective national haunting, with destructive effects. (38)
Eng and Han work from Freud in defining “melancholia” as a “pathological mourning
without end, in which the significance of the lost object remains unconscious and opaque”
(3). In other words, the Asian American/Canadian is constantly navigating an unknown loss
in an effort to “fit in.” All of this is apparent in Soft Magical Tofu Boys as the characters
suppress their magic and, eventually, end up mourning it. The magic itself and the loss of it,
alongside the loss of parts of themselves, are things they don’t completely understand.
Kenneth, by the end, is mourning his inner child and all the parts of himself that he gave up
to be this “unaffected, protected, respected” (Scene 3) workaholic lawyer. He is forced to
come to terms with the loss of himself that happened slowly over the years. Pulling from Eng
and Han’s quotation, the loss of culture and the eventual loss of the boys’ magic is a
“debilitating personal consequence” in an effort to assimilate into mainstream culture and
(intentionally or unintentionally) become the stereotype of the Model Minority. The Model
Minority facilitates “the erasure and loss of repressed Asian American identities as well as
histories of discrimination and exclusion. These identities and histories can return only as a
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type of ghostly presence” (Eng 41), which, in the musical, they literally do through the ghost
ancestor characters. By the end of the musical, Kenneth realizes the damage that has taken
place and the fact that he cannot undo all the barriers he put up: “I wake up, and I go to work,
and I come home, and I do nothing, I dare nothing, I risk nothing, I feel...nothing” (Scene
16). He comes to realize that he has given up everything that made him unique in order to fit
a mold and “survive.”
Wong’s Soft Magical Tofu Boys works with themes of identity and culture in ways
that move representations of Asianness beyond historical yellowface comedy, Orientalism,
and stereotypes of the Chinese Coolie and Model Minority. This work, even in its
developmental stage, has proven to be impactful with audiences. Wong says:
I make a real point of not holding my audience in contempt ever. I always want to
bring them on the journey and offer them something to think about because I think
that's the power of theatre: you engage someone at the deepest level in some kind of
conversation with themselves about what the piece means and I always hope that the
piece will give them something to consider or a question to take forward. I got an
unsolicited message from a young Asian theatre artist after he saw a reading of Tofu
Boys this time and basically he said he saw it with his mom and it opened up a
conversation around his queerness and his Asian experiences as a first generation kid
that they wouldn't have had otherwise and it kind of brought them closer together.
Soft Magical Tofu Boys is a piece that asks how Asian Americans/Canadians might be
complicit in the loss of their culture and individuality. Through this musical, Wong opens up
conversations about expectations, generational trauma, queerness, and how we might be
fulfilling Asian stereotypes in our daily lives.
MEAT
The second new and developing Asian Canadian musical I analyze in this section is
Aaron Jan and Alaska B’s MEAT. Jan and B initially connected through Musical Stage Co’s
2020-21 NoteWorthy Cohort, a program that allows “Canadian composers, lyricists and
playwrights to focus on their musical theatre creation skills” (“NoteWorthy”). They then
went on to collaborate on Tiny Tenements of Terror for Sheridan College’s First Drafts
program in 2022, which was a “series of musicals that reimagine, reconstitute, and reanimate
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the Western ‘musical theatre canon’” (“First Drafts”). Following First Drafts, Aaron Jan and
Alaska B were commissioned by The Musical Stage Company, “with funding by Aubrey &
Marla Dan Fund for New Musicals in 2021” (“Meat”), to create MEAT. MEAT, with a book
by Aaron Jan and Alaska B, and music and lyrics by Alaska B, had its first reading in August
2022. The synopsis, as written on Musical Stage Co’s website, is as follows:
Set in a prairie Chinatown, MEAT is the story of young metal head Philippa Chang,
daughter of the lone Chinese butcher and heir to his “lucky” cleaver. After feeding
meat to a vegan proves a fatal error, Philippa must defeat the devil or risk losing all of
Chinatown to the knife’s curse.
Lacking in the short synopsis is the inclusion of Philippa’s sister Nova. In my interview with
co-book writer Aaron Jan, he speaks to this musical with more specificity, saying:
The show is about these two sisters—Nova, who's the trans sister [that] comes back,
and Philippa, [who is] figuring out how to negotiate this legacy [of the lucky cleaver
and the butcher shop]. Nova really wants the shop and Philippa doesn't, but she's
given the blade. She really hates her sister, so she doesn't want to give her the knife
either. In the second act, they go to hell, and they fight the devil to save their dad’s
soul. I can't speak for Alaska, but I do know that something we've learned working
together for the last few years is that we really wanted to tell an Asian story that was
not about immigration, that was not about racism. One that was about Asian people or
Chinese people being foul, mean, and funny.
Speaking about this project and what he likes seeing and working on, Jan highlights the idea
of Asians being imperfect (just like any other ethnicity), but not having been given the space
and opportunity to embody that on-stage. The historical stereotypes around Asians contribute
to this constraint. As Eng and Han put it: “the regnant ‘model minority myth’ [...] persistently
represents Asian Americans as nerdy automatons, technically gifted in math and sciences,
continuously working, compliant, wealthy, and exempt from discrimination” (2). Wong’s Soft
Magical Tofu Boys problematizes and expands the perspective of the Model
Minority—instead of it being a net positive representation, it is a damaging form of survival.
In MEAT, Jan and B choose to offer another possibility of Asianness by writing “mean,”
funny, complex characters who don’t fit existing Asian stereotypes. Jan says:
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What I like about the show, alongside Alaska's score and the way we work together, is
that we have a similar sense of what we want the show to be—which is Evil Dead,
really raunchy, led by Asian leads with our experiences as East Asians, but not guided
by that. [The characters] are Chinese. They do deal with all these things. There's all
this stuff about filial piety, but first and foremost, it is primarily a story about a
daughter who is trying to tell her dad she wants to leave town, but can't because of
her Asianness and the whole thing about [respecting her dad]. But it's rooted in our
sense of humor and our gross-ness, which is why I really love the project.
Jan and B set out to create a musical that portrays a different “type” of Asian––one that is
rarely, if ever, seen. Due to their knowledge of the history of musical theatre and what
already exists, they decide to “tell an Asian story that [is] not about immigration [or] racism”
(Jan) but is still embedded with their experiences of Asianness. Through MEAT, I examine
how the expectations of Asian femininity are subverted through the characters of Philippa
and Nova via their relationships to filial piety and their destabilizing of the ornamental Asian
body.
I first look at the theme of filial piety, with a focus on each sister’s relationships to
family. Filial piety is common in Asian culture, primarily Chinese culture, deriving from
Confucianism. It is “the attitude of obedience, devotion, and care toward one’s parents and
elder family members that is the basis of individual moral conduct and social harmony”
(“Xiao”). It puts the family’s needs and expectations before those of the self. In the case of
MEAT, the filial piety of daughters Philippa and Nova revolves around taking over the family
butcher shop, Paradise Meat. Paradise Meat is currently owned and run by their father, Ba,
who is set to hand over the lucky cleaver to Philippa on her 21st birthday. Ba recounts the
story of the cleaver and its curse, explaining that the original butcher’s shop was failing until
a merchant came by offering a magic cleaver that would make him “the greatest butcher in
the land” (Act 1 Sc 3). However, the blade is cursed and “it will bind you and your family to
this store [...] so, you must pass the blade to your eldest child” (Act 1 Sc 3). While Philippa is
expected to take the shop and the cleaver, Nova is actually the eldest child and rightful heir.
In a stereotypical rendering of Asianness, filial duty would be followed. I think, here, of
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Flower Drum Song as an example with its importance on marriage and family.39 Countering
the stereotypical tropes, MEAT’s Philippa is looking to escape and leave her father. She
adamantly does not want to stay in the town and take over her family business, but her father
expects and insists that she does. His insistence is additionally bolstered by her father’s
superstition that Philippa was born under a “lucky star.” While Philippa is afraid to confront
her father because of the expectations placed on her, she continuously rejects her filial duty
by searching for someone to take her to the Coast before her 21st birthday, and by throwing
the lucky cleaver in the garbage (which always finds its way back to her). Philippa searches
for an escape as she insists on moving away and becoming a tattoo artist, disregarding the
importance of her position as the daughter of the last Chinese butcher in a gentrifying
Chinatown. Although aware of the pressure of what she “should” do, she follows her wants
in a way that is considered selfish in its disregard for the filial duty expected of her. Philippa
instead puts herself above her family and the survival of their butcher shop. She is not a
“traditional” Chinese daughter or Model Minority because she does not follow the
stereotypes of sacrifice for a safe, conservative job “at the expense of [her] individual desires
and psychic well-being” (Eng 46). She instead chooses to “feel well” rather than “do well.”
In comparison, I look at Nova who is a transgender, vegan chef with experience in a
popular Chinese vegan restaurant on the Coast. She is introduced upon her arrival at the bus
station where she immediately encounters Philippa. Nova explains that despite being away
for seven years since her father disowned her, she is back to take over (and save) the butcher
shop. Despite rejection from her father and Philippa, Nova continues to push for family
connection. She expresses that she “just want[s] [them] to be a normal family again” (Act 1
Scene 3) and that she wants to make the butcher shop successful by helping it evolve into a
trendy, contemporary Chinese vegan restaurant. Nova continues her attempts at reuniting the
family, saying she wants to “make amends and set things right” (Act 1 Scene 3). While
Philippa is begged to take over the butcher shop, she abandons her filial duty, contrasting
Nova who is rejected while pursuing that same filial duty. While Nova is now “filial” upon
her return, she was originally rejected and disowned because of her “abandonment” of the
39 I think of the plotline of the 1958 version with Sammy Fong’s marriage to Mei Li being arranged by his
mother without regard to his input, and Wang San’s disapproval of Wang Ta and Linda Low. Sammy Fong has
to scheme his way out of the marriage since it would not be acceptable or filial for him to just reject the
marriage and express his desire to marry Linda Low instead. Wang San and his son Ta’s ideas on marriage clash
with Ta wanting to marry someone of his choosing.
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family (as opposed to because of her transness).40 Philippa tells Nova that she is not part of
their family and blames Nova for leaving her alone with their father for seven years. Ba
condemns Nova’s behaviour and blames her for their bad luck, saying:
When you here, all you do is complain, get drunk. [...] We are cursed because you
run. Ever since you come back to town, everything unlucky. You are no child of mine.
GET OUT. (Act 1 Scene 9)
While in the present action of the musical Nova adheres to a sense of filial piety, in her past,
she has already subverted and disregarded those expectations by running away. Through both
Philippa and Nova’s desires and actions to escape their family and their town, they subvert
the Chinese expectation of obedience to the family, and particularly the obedience of the
Asian woman.
The second element in MEAT that reframes Asian femininity is the subverting of the
ornamental through the characters’ “grossness” and deviance from the obedient norm of the
Asian woman. Ornamentalism takes the Asian body and makes sense of it through Oriental
objects, “the prosthetic, and the decorative” (Cheng 18). While Cheng’s framing of the
ornamental’s position within historical patriarchal frameworks is not forefronted, she does
cite male writers and histories that have tied the ornamental to the Oriental:
The tying of ornamental artifice to Asiatic femininity in Euro-American visual and
literary cultures is ancient and persistent, reaching as far back as Plato, through the
writings of Marco Polo in the thirteenth century, the novels of Joris-Karl Huysmans
and Oscar Wilde, the visual expressions of art nouveau, French symbolism, American
rococo, and all the way up to wide-ranging iterations in the twentieth and twenty-first
centuries. (7)
Cheng also cites aesthetic-philosophic histories that have rejected the ornamental as “a
distraction, leading us astray from true moral value and genuine beauty,” (15) and how
“scholars (Naomi Schor, Mark Wigley) have observed how gendered the discourse of the
ornament is from Plato to Kracauer, [while] less attention has been paid to how deeply
racialized and specifically Orientalized this history has been as well” (15). Additionally, I
40 The exact reason for Nova’s disownment is unclear. My understanding is that it is the personal conflict
between her and the father, and her abandonment of the family that triggered the disownment. When she tries to
reconcile with the father upon her immediate return he yells at her for leaving and for smashing the glass
counter when she left seven years ago. This makes it seem like it was an argument about work over anything
else.
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make links between the ornamental and the patriarchy based on historical contexts such as
men displaying Asian women like Afong Moy and Pwan Yekoo for profit, and men
frequenting Chop Suey Circuit nightclubs in hopes to see a naked Chinese woman. Through
these links and Cheng’s historical mapping of strong gendered understandings of the
ornament, ornamentalism creates the Asian female body as aesthetic, clean, exotic, and
visually pleasing, with an emphasis on its existence through the male gaze. In MEAT, this
idea of the ornamental, beautiful, and sexual Asian woman is subverted through how
Philippa and Nova exist as multi-faceted, “gross” Chinese Canadian women.
Firstly, Philippa, and later Nova, work in the butcher shop that is described as a mess
that is “always sweaty and a little bit smelly” (Act 1 Scene 1). This is contrary to how the
stereotypical China Doll exists in a beautifully curated diorama of Oriental objects. In
Cheng’s analysis of the Victorian image of “the Chinese Lady,” she highlights how Afong
Moy’s “imagined interiority is not just framed but also deeply infused by the built
environment” (21) made up of silk, porcelain, and mahogany or rosewood furniture. The
Chinese woman “accessorizes the furnishings, while the furnishings accessorize her” (Cheng
21). Taking this same framework to the context of MEAT, Philippa and Nova exist within the
sweaty, smelly, dirty butcher shop and therefore take on attributes of its “grossness.”
Additionally, Philippa is described as a “garbage girl” because she hangs out and smokes
weed by the dumpster. She “looks like a punk and a degenerate drunk” (Act 1 Scene 1),
created both by her own accord and by the environment around her. She is described as not
speaking Chinese, being bad at math, and being an ungrateful daughter—all attributes that go
against Asian stereotypes of the China Doll and the Model Minority. Thinking back to Eng
and Han’s explanation of the model minority as “nerdy automatons, technically gifted in
math and sciences, continuously working, compliant, wealthy, and exempt from
discrimination” (2), Philippa is none of these things. She is described by her best friend
Juniper as having tangled hair, wearing wrinkled clothes, and swearing like a sailor—again,
not adhering to the beauty and smallness (physically and in temperament) of the China Doll
or even the calculated Dragon Lady. Additionally, in her behaviour, Philippa is mean. In her
search to get someone to drive her to the Coast, she schemes and lies, and ends up feeding
meat to a vegan, which in turn opens the gates of hell. She sings to her best friend that she
“always felt that [she] should kill [him her]self” (Act 2 Scene 1) because he is so annoying.
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While the audience witnesses Philippa’s selfish and mean behaviour, this is confirmed by her
interaction with the Devil who later says: “No one wanted to give you a ride because you’re a
dick!” (Act 2 Scene 8). Philippa embodies a mean, gross, Asian female character that is a
stark contrast to the naïve, obedient, beautiful characters like Flower Drum Song’s Mei Li
and Miss Saigon’s Kim. Philippa blindly follows her desire of wanting to be a tattoo artist,
despite her lack of artistic skills, and selfishly seeks what benefits her. Contrary to historical
portrayals of Asians and Asian femininity, Philippa is not meek, childlike, or victimized; she
is instead brash, selfish, and overly confident.
Nova subverts the ornamental in a slightly different way from Philippa. In Nova’s
transness, she has already subverted the figure of the ornamental Asian female and the China
Doll—both of which I make sense of as cisgender and heterosexual by virtue of their
historical origins. Where these figures exist solely through the “feminine,” with attributes of
passivity and obedience, Nova queers those boundaries through her active disobedience.
Nova’s role within the world of the play does not adhere to the function of the China Doll as
art, aesthetic, and sexual object. She is instead a businessperson and innovator—attributes
stereotypically linked to notions of “masculinity”—therefore demonstrating a navigation and
subversion of the feminine/masculine binary. As a Chinese Canadian, she also subverts the
binary of Western and Oriental. Cheng speaks to “track[ing] the incarnations of Asiatic
femininity in Western modernity,” (3) in which “Western modernity” and “modern
personhood [...] is generally understood to be organic, individualistic, masculine, and white”
(Cheng 4). In relation, Asiatic femininity “might [be] roughly label[ed] ‘Oriental female
objectification,’ refracted through the lenses of commodity and sexual fetishism. [...] To
speak of Asiatic femininity, then, is to speak of a style” (14). Nova subverts these white,
masculine, individualistic frameworks in which ornamentalism exists and emerges by not
being an object of commodity or subject of sexual fetishism. While Nova’s transness is not
forefronted in the musical, other than its acknowledgement, its existence within the musical
is profound. The world of the play, and this family specifically, is created to be a world in
which trans/queer Asian femininity exists but is not a trope or something to be made a big
deal of. The only moment of explanation is the following interaction between Nova and Ba:
BA: My son died seven years ago in tragic disownment
NOVA: Ba, we’ve talked about this.
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BA: I not use dead name! Every name is dead name! Because you are dead to me!
(Act 1 Scene 3)
While Nova’s transness and the act of deadnaming is addressed in this moment, it is not
made out to be a major plot point, problem, or trope. Throughout the rest of the scene,
Nova’s “anger management issues” (Act 1 Scene 3) and her abandonment of the family are
made out to be the problem, rather than her transition. In the way her emotions and behaviour
are addressed, Philippa and Ba constantly come back to this question of Nova’s anger and if
she is going to throw or break something. This attribute in context of a trans Asian female
body subverts the China Doll trope of being “devoid of expression” (Davis 52) because
Nova’s heightened emotions are forefronted. Despite all the ways Nova counters these
stereotypical forms of Asian femininity, when she is in hell and challenging the Devil in
order to save her family, she is actually made out to be the pure one because she’s “never
touched that cleaver. [She’s] undamned” (Act 2 Scene 9). Nova, in her presence, offers a new
lens through which to view and understand Asian femininity.
Both Soft Magical Tofu Boys and MEAT employ fantastical, magic elements as
dramaturgical devices and themes, and include queerness in their characters’ identities.
Writers Kevin Wong, Aaron Jan, and Alaska B all take their personal experiences and values
as Asians to create musicals grounded in Asianness but that are not necessarily about their
Asianness. Their stories do not follow the stereotypical Model Minority Myth, immigration,
and racism plotlines that have long defined Asian works. They instead employ multifaceted
Asian characters as opposed to portrayals of “exotic” or stereotypical “model” Asians that we
have historically been forced to settle for on and off stage.
CONCLUSION
In this chapter, I have looked at how casting Asian actors in historically white roles
broadens the possibilities of job opportunities for Asian performers and for audiences to see
Asian role models on-stage. Through seeing Asian bodies giving voice to mental health
struggles and grief in Next to Normal, and the possibilities of red-haired Asian mermaids and
fiery mixed-race Canadian girls in The Little Mermaid and Anne of Green Gables
respectively, the possibilities of what Asianness can look like has evolved beyond the
laboring body, the meek China doll, the oversexualized Dragon Lady, and the war victim.
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Additionally, I have looked to new Asian Canadian musicals and creators for how they are
working to expand Asian representation in musical theatre by writing complex characters
who are grounded in Asianness but are not made stereotypes or defined solely by their
Asianness. Aaron Jan speaks to his work in casting and as a creator in saying: “Working in
casting now, part of my job is to redefine what I understand as a musical theater lead. From
my experience, Chinese Canadians are leads in the show, and [in my own musical theater
writing, I really make sure] they're coded as such.” The new Canadian musicals I have
analyzed in this chapter tell specific stories that have roots in Asian lifeworlds but show the
imperfect, problematic parts of Asians navigating their identities just like any other racial
group. Questions around how our communities may be complicit in perpetuating our own
stereotypes (like that of the Model Minority) are posed as well. By having Asian Canadians
from different experiences write their specific stories, musical theatre can move from limiting
Asian stereotypes to “a canon in which we are fully understood for the breadth of our
experience” (K. Wong).
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CONCLUSION
This thesis has focused on both the historical past of Asians in North America and
their presence in musical theatre past and present. As I stated in my Introduction, I use the
terms “Asian American/Canadian” and “Asian North American” as coalitional terms that
emphasize shared experiences between the groups, while also calling attention to the
existence of differences across various Asian cultural groups in the U.S. and Canada.
Beginning with “Chapter One: Historicizing Stereotypes,” I explored how Asian stereotypes
began to emerge as early as 1755, and have continued to inform how Asian bodies are
represented and perceived on and off stage. Specifically, I traced various histories of Asians
in North America as a way of uncovering the origins of stereotypes like the China Doll, the
Chinese Coolie, the Model Minority, and the Dragon Lady. I examined how the China Doll
emerged from histories of imposed, cultural obedience and human display; the Chinese
Coolie and the Model Minority from physical laborers working in the gold mines and on the
railroads; and the Dragon Lady from histories of oversexualized and trafficked Asian women.
Thinking with this historical context, Chapter Two examined how these historically grounded
stereotypes were reified (and sometimes rerouted) in popular Broadway/commercial musicals
between the 1930s and 2017 via the shows Anything Goes, On The Town, The King and I,
Flower Drum Song and Miss Saigon. Moving through these prominent representations of
Asianness in musical theatre, Chapter Three moved beyond Broadway to investigate
Canadian musical theatre from 2017 to the present day via “non-traditional” casting practices
and the new Asian Canadian musicals Soft Magical Tofu Boys and MEAT. I highlighted how
“non-traditional” casting allowed Asian performers in Next to Normal, The Little Mermaid,
and Anne of Green Gables: The Musical to take on roles they have traditionally been
excluded from. I analyzed how the inclusion of Asian Canadian writers and their
representations of Asianness contribute to a heterogenous rendering of Asians in musical
theatre. Ultimately, my thesis has argued that constructions of Asianness in North American
musical theatre have evolved from homogenous to heterogenous, and contemporary musical
theatre has expanded the possibilities for Asian representation by problematizing and
subverting early stereotypical constructions of Asians in North American musical theatre.
As my methodology for this thesis included interviews with contemporary musical
theatre artists, I would like to highlight that many of my interviewees noted a significant shift
93
in representations of Asianness in musical theatre––primarily over the last 10-15 years. Many
of the artists reflected on the evolution of Asianness on-stage as both spectators and
performers. As performers, some noted feeling like the token Asian in productions. Others
noted Asian cohorts and mentors being few and far between until recently. As spectators,
some had previously only seen Asians as background/ensemble members but now see them
as leads, therefore indicating an evolution in the roles and space that Asianness takes up in
the industry. Performer and choreographer Julio Fuentes reflected on the hyper-awareness of
his “otherness” in the arts:
I remember [my dad] saying, “You know, you're very talented and this is what you
want, but don't get your hopes up too high because we are not what they want here.”
And [for the first bit of my career] that piece of advice kept following me. I would
notice with each show I booked, I was like, “I am the only Filipino.” And often the
only Asian. Where are the rest of us? I didn't know any other Filipinos that I could
even look up to or talk to for advice. [Now, it’s] very nice and very encouraging to
see more and more [Asians in the industry]. That's giving me a lot of hope. I guess it’s
making the loneliness of my performing career worth it because maybe seeing [Asian
performers] across Canada hanging in there, representing, doing the thing, and doing
it well; maybe that has encouraged a new generation of Asian performers to pursue
[the arts].
As I have argued, representations of Asianness in North American musical theatre have
evolved from limited and homogeneous toward a more expansive heterogeneity. Here,
Fuentes speaks to the slow, yet present, emergence and inclusion of heterogeneous Asian
performers who inhabit new, varied representations. Similarly, playwright Nam Nguyen also
describes the development of musical theatre and the move away from stereotypical images:
I think we've been moving from stereotypical image to stereotypical image.
Vietnamese people, for the longest time, were just a war. And then the war ended, and
the initial straight identity play version of that is “my refugee parents made me
strong” etc. And I think post-2016 we're in an interesting place of being a cultural
soup [where] everybody's crossing over with everyone.
Nguyen is one of the writers expanding Vietnamese representations in musical theatre via his
shows A Perfect Bowl of Pho and Red Tide. Here, Nguyen speaks to a shift in theatre that is
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less than 10 years old. I believe that this “post-2016” shift that Nguyen speaks of is partially
a product of the musical Hamilton’s massive popularity. Employing a colour-conscious
casting of American history that included Black, Brown, Asian, and white people, Hamilton
changed the culture of musical theatre by embracing pop and rap music, as well as by
centering people of colour.
While some interviewees named a hopeful opening onto multiplicity and inclusion,
constraints imposed upon Asian bodies on-stage remain. Performer Rosie Simon speaks to
this feeling, saying:
I really do feel, a lot of the time, like there is a glass ceiling for Asian people with
roles that we’re “allowed” to play, or that we’ll be seen to play. And I'm not entirely
sure why. I think it's because in society, we're still seen as foreign, despite so many of
us having lived here for so long. People see Asian people, and they just assume that
we don't speak English. They just assume that we're so steeped in this other culture
that we couldn't possibly be seen as anything different. And I feel like sometimes
people have a hard time separating that and breaking their preconceived notions of
who we are. I think there's a lot of talent out there. And I think our experiences as
immigrants, as minorities, can really enrich a performance in how we interpret a
character, and how we portray certain roles.
Simon describes how Asians are still often seen as perpetual foreigners in Canada despite
having lived and worked here for decades. That said, through “non-traditional” and
colour-conscious casting, the roles that we are “allowed” to play are opening up.
“Non-traditional” casting is often framed as “radical,” therefore it is not yet a common,
normative practice but instead something that draws attention to a “progressive” inclusion of
BIPOC actors. All of this is to say that a combination of casting and new works specifically
written by/for Asians is required to break the preconceived notions that Simon speaks of.
Similarly to Nguyen and Fuentes, when asked about the first thing he thinks of when he
thinks of “Asians in musical theatre,” performer, director, and producer Damon Bradley Jang
describes the shift in how Asians are framed, saying:
Well, if you were to ask me the same question ten years ago, I'd probably say
ensemble members. Not a lot of original book musicals centering Asian stories. Not
seeing a lot of Asian leads in white-centric musicals, but now it's completely
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different. The landscape has shifted. There is a lot more diversity, there is a lot more
development. As a spectator, again, same thing. It's been more active within the last
five or ten years in terms of seeing more representation and opportunities on stage,
especially post 2020.
As evidenced here by Jang, and previously by Fuentes, there is often a gesture of looking
back that appreciates how far we have come in terms of Asianness in musical theatre, as well
as a hopeful, determined gaze forward to what is possible. These artists, myself included,
have a deep desire for even more Asian representations and productions that go beyond
prescribed stereotypes.
This thesis has begun to answer my question of if and how Asians fit into the past,
present, and future of musical theatre. The answer is that we do—but with an emphasis on
the future. Much of our past––for example The Chop Suey Circuit and Sono Osato’s lead role
as Ivy Smith in Broadway’s On The Town––has been overlooked and is missing from
mainstream conversations in musical theatre history. Moreover, for too long we have not
been able to tell our own stories. But today, contemporary and emerging Asian North
American creators are receiving the space and resources to do so. Looking ahead, future
scholarly work on Asianness in North American musical theatre could hone in on specific
Asian identities like Filipino-Canadianness in Prison Dancer: The Musical and Mabuhay!;
specific intersections of queerness and Asianness in musicals like Interstate and Eastbound;
and musicals centering Asian, Asian American, and Asian Canadian history like Here Lies
Love, Allegiance, and Red Letters.41
41 Prison Dancer: The Musical: “A modern inspired-by-a-true-story of Filipino inmates dancing to Michael
Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ that launched one of the world’s first viral YouTube videos in 2007.” (“Prison Dancer the
Musical”)
Mabuhay!: “The story of Ma-Buhay is set in present-day Winnipeg, and follows three young Filipinos from
different economic backgrounds as they compete in the grand finale of a prestigious singing competition, ‘Star
On The Rise’ to prove to the judges, their families and the country that they are worthy of the national title.”
(“Mabuhay!”)
Interstate: Interstate is an Asian-American pop-rock poetry musical that follows Dash, a transgender spoken
word performer who becomes internet-famous along with his best friend Adrian, a lesbian singer-songwriter.
“Fueled by the allure of fame and a desire to connect with their community, the band embarks on a road trip
across America for their first national tour. Their fiercely political and deeply personal music touches Henry, a
transgender teenage boy living in small-town middle America, and he finds solace in their art as he struggles
with his own identity and family.” (“Interstate”)
96
As stated in my Introduction, I hope that this work contributes to conversations about
Asian representation in musical theatre in a tangible way that goes beyond the basic assertion
that we need more representation. I have contributed to musical theatre history by showing
that Asians belong in and have already been a part of this industry. I have laid out a more
fulsome understanding of Asian North American histories as they relate to the development
of Asian stereotypes. My hope is that these legacies and histories continue to receive the
attention that they deserve within both Asian and non-Asian communities and spaces.
Additionally, it is my hope that my findings in this thesis inform how Asians are written
about in new musical theatre. For in order to subvert negative stereotypes, we must first
understand how they came to be and what exactly we are fighting against. Most recently, the
2020 COVID era highlighted the violence of anti-Asian racism, including how Asian
stereotypes and phantasms of otherness persist in 21st century North America. Because what
we see on stage can dramatically influence how we think about the world and the way we
move through it; Asian representations in musical theatre matter as they are able to
communicate the full, multi-faceted humanity of our communities.
Eastbound: Eastbound follows the meeting of two brothers from opposite sides of the world. One is a
Chinese-American adoptee contending with cancer. The other is struggling with his sexuality and a romance
with his roommate. (“Eastbound”)
Here Lies Love: “Here Lies Love is a groundbreaking musical about former Filipina First Lady Imelda Marcos'
astonishing rise to power and subsequent fall at the hands of the Philippine People Power Revolution.” (“Here
Lies Love”)
Allegiance: “Inspired by the childhood of George Takei, Allegiance is a moving and uplifting story of love, war,
and heroism set during the Japanese American internment of World War II. It follows the story of the Kimura
family in the weeks and years after the attack on Pearl Harbor, as they are relocated from their farm in Salinas,
California to the Heart Mountain internment camp in the rural plains of Wyoming.” (“Allegiance”)
Red Letters: “an original Canadian musical written by Alan Bau and Kathy Leung with music and lyrics
composed by Alan Bau. Set in 1920s Vancouver, [it follows] Shen, an immigrant from China who leaves his
wife Mei to come to Canada seeking his fortune” (Zhong). Histories of the Exclusion Act of 1923 and the head
tax are present.
97
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