Celebrating APIDA theater

Popular musicals like “Miss Saigon,” “South Pacific” and “The King and I” have long been lauded for adding diversity to Broadway. However, taking a closer look reveals that these shows are steeped in stereotypes: Yellowface and exoticism take center stage, reducing Asian characters to their racial identity. Currently, in the wake of surging anti-Asian racism, media representation continues to be an important issue, which made it a timely topic for Visions and Voices’ event, “Dismantling Orientalism: This is Not a True Story.”

Visions and Voices hosted Asian American theater practitioners and scholars at the USC Pacific Asia Museum Friday for a conversation and staged reading centered around dismantling Orientalism. Orientalism is a theory — popularly critiqued by Edward Said — that analyzes how Western media portrays the East, or the so-called “Orient,” through a colonialist lens. 

Roski professor Jenny Lin moderated the discussion on Asian American media representation and dismantling Orientalism, which featured School of Dramatic Arts and Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences professor Rena Heinrich, UC Riverside professor Donatella Galella and Artists at Play Director Reena Dutt.

“Orientalism is a lens through which the West looks at, understands and tries to contain the East. The West knows itself by what it is not, and it holds the East and the West in a binary,” Heinrich said. “So, if the West is strong, then the East is weak. If the West is rational, the East is irrational. If the West is masculine, then the East is feminine.”

The effects of this theory can be seen in popular media featuring Asian characters, including the opera Madama Butterfly and the musical based on it “Miss Saigon.”

“[‘Miss Saigon’] completely ignores and actually romanticizes the colonialism of the United States,” Galella said. “It’s like a tragedy and we’re moved to tears. And that’s actually kind of what’s so seductive and pernicious about it, that it tugs at our hearts strings. We think it’s beautiful, right?”

The panel applauded the recent success of Asian American films, such as “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” but championed the need for more representation. Galella cited the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative’s study on portrayals of Asian Pacific Islanders in film, which found that only about 3% of top grossing movies from 2007 to 2019 had an APIDA lead or co-lead. Out of these 44 films, 14 of them starred Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.

“Inevitably and naturally, we tend to reproduce things and re-consume things and show these films over and over to the next generation. So we need more, and we need to change the narrative,” Galella said. “I feel really lucky that I could show my kid ‘Turning Red,’ for example. I didn’t have that growing up.”

Dutt added that bringing theater into education could help break the cycle of undervaluing the arts. 

“If a child grows up with theater in their world, they’re going to become patrons, which is going to fund the theater, which is then going to provide the opportunity to tell more diverse stories,” Dutt said. “That’s what we do in the theater. We educate people through storytelling. But everything’s kind of integrated, right? There has to be a seed planted very young in order for it to be important.”

In practice, dismantling Orientalism looks like creating safe spaces for Asian American artists in theater and film that do not tokenize their racial identity. 

“A lot of my work is just having conversations with producers, executives and artistic leaders for, ‘Why can’t I tell an American story that doesn’t have anything to do with South Asia?’” Dutt said. “‘Why can’t I tell a story about a girl from North Carolina?’ Because I’m from North Carolina. [We have to prove] why we are actually part of the American diaspora.”

The conversation was followed by a staged reading of “This is Not a True Story,” a new play by Preston Choi that interrogates the trope of the tragic Asian woman in theater and blurs the lines between fiction and reality.

The play centers around three characters: Cio-Cio from “Madama Butterfly,” Kim from “Miss Saigon” and Takako/Kumiko, who is loosely based on the protagonist of “Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter.” Choi’s writing flips the stereotypes of Orientalism on its head. The three become stuck in a time loop, and Kumiko must explain to the other two women that they are fictional characters subject to the prejudices of the men who wrote them.

“[The play] is like I’m going to take what you have and give it back to you in a way that, hopefully, you’ll see just how ridiculous [the stereotype] is and blown out of proportion,” Choi said.

Choi’s “This is Not a True Story” is a prime example of dismantling Orientalism while lifting up new Asian American voices. 

“I just met Preston and I was like, ‘Oh my goodness, I’m so excited to meet you because you’ve been winning all these awards.’ I’ve been excited to see this play for years now, ever since Artists at Play announced it. So I just seek those out and it feeds me,” Galella said. “So, that’s what you do. You find the folks making stories and then you feed off of it to stay alive as a way to preserve yourself.”