Video: YELLOW FACE Cast Breaks Down Their Roles

I play a character who's got the initials D.H

And suspiciously, our playwright also has the same initials. I actually play a version of David Henry Wong

And what's interesting about the play is that he's someone who's not a hero

He's fallible. so often when playwrights put themselves in their own work, they become heroes of sorts

But David is humble about his role in this and DHH's role, and it's great because we see his humanity, warts and all

I play Actor A, officially, which I guess is a catch-all for I play everybody in the world

I have like a million characters, some that just pop up for a line here or there, and some that have a little bit more

But you know, everything from like, you know, Mayor Ed Koch to Mark Lynn Baker, to, you know, a Russian newspaper, to an adult bookstore owner, like just everyone you can think of, I wind up playing them

And not only is it really fun and really a great kind of challenge but it you know it more than just a little acting stunt It kind of the theme of the play this idea of putting on different identities you know

And so that's really exciting to me to have this kind of

this fun sort of challenge that is also kind of like part of the DNA

and the world of the show. So it's thrilling. I play Marcus, who is an actor who is cast by DHHH, Daniel's character, who was based on David, the playwright himself

I'm cast in his play and mistaken for Asian. And then we go down the rabbit hole of a lot of confusion and mix-up and humor

And it's really fun. I mean, it starts in this very funny place of kind of laughing at about these themes

but by the end they're really embodied. Back in 2007, I played like 16 different parts

This time around I am focusing mostly on David's father, Henry, and I'm loving that the play itself is now going to be a one act

and it is focusing, I think, a lot on the parent relationship

on the relationship between David and his father And by extension the relationship that we have with being known by someone by a parent who will know us only as a parent knows us And yet you know who more mysterious than our parents

You know, what were they like when they were falling in love, when they were first

figuring out who they were? And likewise, who are we as kids

What do we decide to tell our parents about who we really are? I think that the play deals a lot with the roles that we choose to play with in public on stage and also with our family

And what roles are we cast as in our families? Well, I mean, a lot of them are prominent figures that you probably know and have heard of

It's a challenge. I'm playing a lot of men, older men, a lot of older white men, to be clear

And so it's a challenge, because I want to do service to them

but also and do service to the play as well. And it's like, I don't want to insult anyone

So it's like a fine line you kind of have to ride. But the way it's written, it's just, it all lines up perfectly

And we have a really great voice and dialect coach as well, who really helping us craft each character I play a character N name withheld on Advice of Counsel I am a very important mysterious figure who tricks you into thinking that he just a polite stage manager character

and then comes in with some hard-hitting questions for David and changes everything

I play maybe 10 roles. The one that repeats the most is Leah

who is the character DHH's ex-girlfriend and Marcus's current girlfriend. So there's a love triangle involved, which is fun

And both of the gentlemen, they're not hard in the eyes, you know, so it's an easy track to play

And then other than that, I'm playing like Cameron McIntosh, and obviously

and newspaper reporters aggrieved students. So there's a nice range of, again, intelligent fools to play

It must be so much fun, like in one play to play all these different people throughout the evening, right

Yeah, I mean, we're still figuring it out. So right now it's just like sort of whiplash, but I can feel right now as we're rehearsing

I'm like, this is going to be so fun to run. Yeah