Great Performances – Yellow Face airs Monday, August 4 at 8PM

What happens when an actor steps into a role based on the playwright sitting just feet away? In Yellow Face, Tony nominee and beloved screen star Daniel Dae Kim (Lost, *Hawaii Five-0*) makes his Broadway origin story debut, tackling the meta-theatrical challenge of portraying “DHH”—a fictionalized version of the play’s own author, David Henry Hwang. And in a twist only the theater could conjure, Hwang himself has been in the rehearsal room, watching his doppelgänger come to life.

This razor-sharp comedy from Roundabout Theatre Company—filmed for Great Performances—follows an Asian American playwright (Kim) who publicly protests yellowface casting in Miss Saigon… only to accidentally hire a white actor for an Asian role in his own production. The ensuing chaos spirals into a biting, hilarious farce about identity, hypocrisy, and the tangled politics of race in show business.

Directed by Leigh Silverman (Violet, Suffs), the production also stars Tony winner Francis Jue as the playwright’s father, a performance that earned him the Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play. Blurring the lines between autobiography and satire, Yellow Face asks: How do we define who we are—and who gets to decide?