Feeling Yellow by Donatella Galella

Feeling Yellow by Donatella Galella

Feeling Yellow examines how yellowface has persisted on the contemporary musical stage and how Asian Americans have contested yellowface, as they stake their own claim to the theatrical stage and nation state. Donatella Galella boldly argues that the pleasures of musical theatre and the disavowal of systemic anti-Asian racism enable the ongoing portrayal of Asian and Asian American characters by non-Asian actors. Galella offers two concepts to understand these phenomena: feeling yellow and yellowface without yellowed faces. Feeling yellow encapsulates the racialized anger, despair, and alienation of Asian American artists and audiences. Yellowface without yellowed faces denotes subtle ways of conveying Asianness, such as performing Asianness with exaggerated irony, using racialized costumes rather than yellow skin and slanted eye makeup, and setting musicals in fantasy Asian lands populated by multiracial casts.

Galella utilizes musicals such as Thoroughly Modern Millie, Anything Goes, The Mikado, and Soft Power, to understand how Asian and Asian American representation is connected to larger questions: How does racial identity shape emotional reactions to musical theatre? Why does yellowface and anti-Asian racism persist? What are the terms for Asian Americans belonging in the United States? Using a range of approaches from dramaturgy to auto-ethnography and materials from interviews to Reddit posts, Feeling Yellow spotlights Asian American affect, artistry, and activism.

“Feeling Yellow: Asian Americans and Yellowface in Twenty-First-Century Musical Theatre is an illuminating and original treatment of Asian American representation and American musical theatreThis project does not just call out the legacies of yellowface, but also emphasizes how overtly racist representations maintain a hold even at a time of increasing awareness about racism in American theater on the part of theater artists and audience members. The project is a significant contribution to scholarship on Asian American performance and theater as well as studies of musical theater.”

Donatella Galella is Associate Professor of Theatre, Film, and Digital Production at the University of California, Riverside.