Yankee Dawg You Die by Philip Kan Gotanda

First published: 1991

First produced: 1987, at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Berkeley, California

Type of plot: Social realism

Time of work: End of the twentieth century

Locale: Hollywood, California

Principal Characters:

• Vincent Chang, a successful actor of Japanese descent in his sixties
• Bradley Yamashita, an actor of Japanese descent in his late twenties

The Play

Yankee Dawg You Die begins and ends with Vincent Chang and Bradley Yamashita, two Asian American actors of different generations, in a private conversation on the balcony of a Hollywood Hills home while an entertainment industry party takes place inside. Nine scenes in two acts reveal one year of their relationship during which they move from initially feeling their differences acutely to their growing awareness of their similarities as actors, as American-born men of Japanese descent, and as humans full of powerful ambitions and abiding insecurities.

In the first scene the two men are strangers isolated on the balcony just as they are marginalized in the entertainment industry. Although allied by gender, profession, and dreams of success in the star system, they are divided by age, work experience, historical circumstance, and personal competitiveness. Meeting in auditions and in acting classes in the months that follow, Vincent and Bradley discuss their careers, the limited and stereotypical roles available to them, and their frustrations, accomplishments, and strategies for success. They learn each other’s life secrets and, through conversations that often move in rhythms of revelation, insult, and apology, develop a bond of respect and affection. Woven into their conversations are dreamlike interludes that represent their inner feelings and their past and present roles in film and theater.

In the five scenes of act 1, the established star, Vincent Chang, reveals details of his decades-long career as a Hollywood actor, including the fact that he dropped his Japanese name and changed the shape of his nose in response to extreme racial prejudices in American society during and after World War II. Though generally limited to roles like that of Sergeant Moto, a gross 1940’s stereotype of a Japanese soldier, his talent was recognized nonetheless by an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actor. Vincent’s recollections of his career provide glimpses into the history of Asians in the American entertainment industry during the 1940’s and 1950’s. He moved from the “chop suey” vaudeville circuit to years of one-dimensional minor roles as menacing soldiers and obsequious houseboys and waiters, to the status of a leading man, who nevertheless is not allowed to kiss the female star.

In contrast, as a member of the newer generation of Asian American actors working in local theater, Bradley Yamashita is a politically correct idealist, who scorns Vincent’s decisions to accept roles no matter how degrading they are. As the scenes unfold, Vincent and Bradley enact shifting roles of father and son, teacher and pupil, until eventually they become professional colleagues, confidants, and mutual supporters. Act 1 culminates in their collaboration in a workshop production of a political drama called Godzilla at a local Asian American theater. There they gain freedom to explore Asian experiences and traditions albeit at the price of exclusion from mainstream theater and culture.

Although act 2 begins with Vincent coaching Bradley for a Shakespearean role, its scenes are dominated by their mutual rage at mainstream exclusion and their painful career reversals. Bradley is rejected by his high-powered agent and is reassigned to an Asian agent. Vincent rehearses one line for a tiny role, this time as a North Vietnamese general—yet another version of the Sergeant Moto character. In the play’s climax, scene 3 of act 2, Vincent declares that in Bradley, he sees himself. He identifies with Bradley’s search for personal identity and fulfilling work, and he also sees that Bradley must struggle with the forces of discrimination just as he did thirty-five years earlier. Though the two men reverse their positions as the play ends, with Vincent acting in local Asian theater and Bradley compromising his ideals by taking a stereotypical commercial role, their careers suggest that little has changed for Asians in an American culture that continues to exclude non-Europeans from power with limited opportunities.

Dramatic Devices

The seven interludes of private reflection and glimpses of theatrical roles, which are incorporated into the play’s nine realistic scenes, comment upon and dramatically contrast the exchanges between Vincent and Bradley. Like the entertainments integrated into traditional morality plays, these interludes operate as flashbacks or flash-forwards and reflect conscious or unconscious experiences, all of which add depth and complexity to the play’s characterizations and themes. The repetitious and varied racial stereotypes, seen by the audience in the past roles of Vincent and Bradley, constitute a cumulative critique of contemporary society. The faces and voices of Vincent and Bradley shown in the interludes contribute fluid, surreal depth to their portraits, an aspect further highlighted by minimalist staging, with shifting key words and thematic images projected upon abstract backdrops resembling traditional paper shoji screens.

The realistic drama begins and ends with Vincent and Bradley looking first at the real Hollywood stars partying nearby. However, the play also begins and ends with the image of the two men gazing upward at the North Star, a universal emblem of guidance. This symbolic scene affirms the possibility that the distortions and mazes of day-to-day struggle can be navigated if one’s gaze is kept on the larger picture, the whole of human experience. Thus microcosmic and macrocosmic perspectives in the conventional scenes of the drama resonate with one another to suggest the possibility of finding a positive path into the future.

Critical Context

Philip Kan Gotanda established his national reputation with a series of realistic plays focused primarily on struggles within Japanese American families. These works included a trilogy of plays created during the 1980’s, each of which showed the same Nisei family from the perspective of a different family member. Gotanda’s focus on the professional lives of Asian American actors and the discrimination in the Hollywood entertainment industry in Yankee Dawg You Die appealed to broader audiences, and since the 1990’s, the play has been produced not only in Asian American theaters but also in larger venues across the country. In addition to his successes in theater, he has also written, directed, and performed in award-winning independent films. Gotanda ranks among the most important pioneers of Asian American theater, finding a niche among notable literary figures such as Frank Chin, David Henry Hwang, and Velina Hasu Houston.

Yankee Dawg You Die continues to be performed and read for its exploration of the power of racial and gender stereotypes in contemporary lives as well as its examination of the power of the entertainment industry to perpetuate or fracture such fixed images. The play’s glimpses into the history of Asians in film and theater offer opportunities to research and discuss American social change during the twentieth century.

Sources for Further Study

Fichandler, Zelda. “Casting for a Different Truth.” American Theatre 5 (May, 1998): 18-23.

Kurahashi, Yuko. Asian American Culture on Stage: The History of the East West Players. New York: Garland, 1999.

Moy, James S. “David Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly and Philip Kan Gotanda’s Yankee Dawg You Die: Repositioning Chinese American Marginality on the American Stage.” Theatre Journal 42 (March, 1990): 48-56.

Shimakawa, Karen. “Asians in America: Millennial Approaches to Asian Pacific American Performance.” Journal of Asian American Studies 3 (2000): 283-297.

Swanson, Meg, with Robin Murray. Playwrights of Color. Yarmouth, Maine: Intercultural Press, 1999.