This is a bit of a surreal moment.

I'm about to head to my first day of rehearsals for Yellow Face.

I feel like I feel like a kid on his first day of school.

I got my backpack.

I feel like I should have a lunchbox.

Yellow Face is the semi-autobiographical story of a playwright who protests the hiring of a white man playing an Asian lead in Miss Saigon, who then mistakenly casts a white man to play an Asian lead in his very next play.

Oh my gosh.

I did not know that.

I did not know this was the theater.

So literally, I have chicken skin right now.

The first day of rehearsal is always filled with wonder, fear, nervousness, excitement.

Hi.

Oh, Chuck.

Nice to meet you.

Yeah.

Thank you so much for your help.

Oh, my gosh, thank you.

Yeah.

Really?

Including this.

This is all...

It's all happening.

Hi, I'm Daniel.

I'm Janet.

I'm the Assistant Stage Manager Oh.

Hey, Janet.

Nice to meet you.

Hi.

How are you?

Finally.

What's up?

I hadn't worked with a lot of the other actors.

Did you do a Law & Order?

Did you do a Law & Order?

(laughs) What are we supposed to... Are we suppose to just sit anywhere?

First thing we're going to do is go around the room and introduce ourselves.

Hi!

I'm Daniel Dae Kim.

He/him.

I'm trying to be a reasonable facsimile of David Henry Hwang.

Ha ha ha.

You know, it had been what, eight years since I'd been on stage.

And so working those muscles again.

And every production is its own unique, living, breathing organism.

And so I was really curious to see what ours would be.

Besides, I already wrote a play criticizing Madam Butterfly.

What play was that?

M. Butterfly!

(Laughter) Oh!

Right.

We are going to do a run through.

This is only our third run through.

I'm excited and nervous for you guys to see it.

There's a lot to do still.

We have one more week of rehearsal before we start showing it to people and there's work to do for sure.

So, every day is a little progress and every day is an opportunity to make it better.

Thanks, George.

Hi.

Hello.

How are you?

Nice to meet you.

I like all of your shows.

Oh, thank you very much.

I work in there too.

Oh, yeah?

Yeah.

Should we go up?

(Elevator dings) Good morning.

Good morning.

You know, I live in Hawaii and there's this thing where, when you're surfing, you see a great wave coming and you just turn your board and you start paddling as fast as you can because you want to get on this wave, even though the wave might be too big for you.

It's just too good not to try.

And the first run through was literally me being on that wave, catching up to that wave, being on it and holding on for dear life.

And it's certainly never been my intention to see a show canceled.

I simply felt an important point had to be made, and this has clearly been achieved.

David, I heard a call... Ohhhh!

Is there anything i can do to help?

Anything?

Why are you torturing me?

For me to know where I go next and like, where what scene is happening next was taking all of my brainpower.

And at the same time, it was exhilarating because you're starting to see it take shape for the first time, and you can start to see the potential of what you might have.

And the 1988 Tony Award for Best Play goes to M. Butterfly!

Author David Henry Wong, Producers Stuart Ostrow and David Geffen.

Working with David and having him be in the room, especially given that he's a character in the play, could potentially be really daunting.

You know, he's sitting right in front of the performers every rehearsal, and he's taking notes and things.

And to his credit, I never felt critique or judgment coming from him.

I have the utmost respect for David because he started his career at a time when there were there was no one who blazed a trail before him on Broadway.

I believe he was the first Asian playwright ever produced on Broadway.

In fact, my character says that in the play.

And to this day, I think he's only one of two.

And he's been working in the theater for 40 years.

And so I know how much his play means to him.

And, you know, it's important to me to do not just him justice, but the themes of the play, justice.

To have Yellow Face on Broadway is incredibly important for a lot of reasons, including the fact that mostly when you have had Asians on Broadway, they haven't been playing Americans.

Like if you think about a Broadway show that has Asian American actors, they're always playing like foreign Asians.

And this is Asians being Asian Americans and centering the Asian American experience.

And that's very important to me.

I don't even put my money into minority banks anymore because the system doesn't play fair.

David, I heard about your father... And Frances, Let's have you go off I need to see your face for all the great acting.

Being in the theater for the first time was meaningful for me.

And I just remembered the 21 year old I was sitting in the balcony just wanting to be a part of this.

The power of that moment was very, very meaningful.

David, I heard about your father.

Why won't you leave me alone?

Get out of my life.

Why do you keep popping up everywhere I look being all... We've been rehearsing now for almost a month and we do our first public performance in a couple of days.

And I can't believe how quick the time has gone.

I feel like we could use another month, to be honest.

But it'll be nice to see it in front of an audience to get feedback from them.

We are exactly an hour and 15 minutes from our first preview.

Our very first time in front of a paying audience.

I'm told it's a packed house and it's only the second time we've run the show.

And so this will be exciting, informative and fun.

Remember that thing about the wave?

So, first preview with the audience was a similar wave.

Except I'm a little better surfer now.

We learned so much from the audience response.

When the audience laughs at something that we didn't find funny in the rehearsal space, or doesn't laugh at something that we found hilarious, or we hear gasps at places that we just thought we should just roll right through, It shapes our performances.

(Cheers and Applause) Well, it's opening night.

We've gone through the entire rehearsal period and the preview period.

And this is our official unveiling to the world.

I didn't expect to be nervous, but I am a little bit.

I'm heading to the theater now.

We're going to talk to some press.

It's kind of like a red carpet premiere night for TV or film.

But it's special for theater because it's all live.

And we get to do the carpet and then perform.

Have you ever thought about taking a stage name?

Like what?

How about just Marcus G. So, without any further delay, please welcome David Henry Hwang and Marcus G. Leah.

He's not Asian.

David.

No one is Asian enough for you.

That's not what I'm talking about.

Opening night is a bit of a blur, to be honest.

I felt like it went well and at the same time I felt like it went by in a blink.

I feel like that about this entire experience.

Why are you torturing me?

When I started my career, of course I had aspirations to be on Broadway.

I just saw no practical path to get there.

So the fact that I'm here now, and the fact that it's with a play like this is poetic.

Because it not only shows that it's possible for actors, but it's also possible for playwrights to have a show about Asian Americans showcased on the greatest stage in the world.

(Applause) I couldn't let this occasion go by without introducing to you our incredible playwright and director.

Please welcome David Henry Hwang and Leigh Silverman.

(Applause) This is what we all dream of.

This is what we all hope for.

And I've been in this business a long time, and it's nice that the time that I've spent here has has led to something like this.

Because not many actors get to say that.