Blackface and Yellowface: American Theater and Racial Performance

FAIN: FEL-262037-19

Josephine Lee
University of Minnesota (Minneapolis, MN 55455-2009)

Research and writing of a book-length study on the relationship between yellowface and blackface acting and representation in 19^th- and 20^th-century American theater.

My proposed project is a book focusing on the figurative and literal intersections of yellowface and blackface acting and representation in nineteenth and twentieth-century American theater. This will examine how blackface and yellowface acts were performed side-by-side by white minstrels and in plays; the careers, preparation, and perspectives of actors who played both “black” and “oriental” characters; key productions in which African Americans performed in yellowface; and the adoption of and challenges to blackface by Asian Americans in drama and literature. My work highlights how American orientalism affected the production of both blackface minstrelsy and African American theater, and also addresses how Asian Americans have responded to these theatrical legacies. In looking at this history, I move scholarship on American theater beyond a white/nonwhite binary, and show how stage performance manifests the polycultural and dynamic nature of racial formation.

Associated Products

The Shared Spaces of Blackface and Yellowface (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: The Shared Spaces of Blackface and Yellowface
Author: Josephine Lee
Abstract: Josephine Lee (Professor of English and Asian American Studies, UM) and Sarah Bellamy (Artistic Director, Penumbra Theatre) will talk about the intersecting histories and contemporary dynamics of black and Asian representation in American theater. Lee will share some of her current research on how different theatrical forms such as minstrelsy, vaudeville, and musical theater juxtaposed blackface representation and stage orientalism in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Bellamy will comment on how this history has affect theater practice today, and what kinds of change and collaboration we might imagine for the future. This will be a fascinating conversation about how American theater defines or moves across racial lines, understanding the persistence of racial stereotypes, and building coalitions.
Date: 09/26/2019

Oriental, Black, and White: The Formation of Racial Habits in American Theater (Book)
Title: Oriental, Black, and White: The Formation of Racial Habits in American Theater
Author: Josephine Lee
Abstract: In this book, Josephine Lee looks at the intertwined racial representations of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American theater. In minstrelsy, melodrama, vaudeville, and musicals, both white and African American performers enacted blackface characterizations alongside oriental stereotypes of opulence and deception, comic servitude, and exotic sexuality. Lee shows how blackface types were often associated with working-class masculinity and the development of a nativist white racial identity for European immigrants, while the oriental marked what was culturally coded as foreign, feminized, and ornamental. These conflicting racial connotations were often intermingled in actual stage performance, as stage productions contrasted nostalgic characterizations of plantation slavery with the figures of the despotic sultan, the seductive dancing girl, and the comic Chinese laundryman. African American performers also performed common oriental themes and characterizations, repurposing them for their own commentary on Black racial progress and aspiration. The juxtaposition of orientalism and black figuration became standard fare for American theatergoers at a historical moment in which the color line was rigidly policed. These interlocking cross-racial impersonations offer fascinating insights into habits of racial representation both inside and outside the theater.
Year: 2022
Primary URL: https://uncpress.org/book/9781469669625/oriental-black-and-white/
Publisher: University of North Carolina Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 9781469669625
Copy sent to NEH?: No

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