The Fairy Princess had a very good BroadwayCon 2024. She moderated two panels on the AANHPI diaspora, one devoted to the Actors and the next to the Playwrights. You can view them both on her Official Web Page.
Many thanks to her panelists, Courtney Reed, Nadia Dandashi, Orville Mendoza, Lauren Yee, and Damon Chua. All were well spoken and brilliant – and actually, what we spoke on was the progress AANHPIs have made and how we continue it – very mindful, very considerate conversations were had – that is how we go into a panel.
Not quite so demure, but respectful. Very mindful.
Also, for those paying attention, BroadwayCon will go back to it’s Winter is Coming era, and the next one is in February 2025! Keep a look out!
Feb 7-9th.
Let’s switch to our New York Stages – coming in September is SEE WHAT I WANNA SEE, directed by Emilio Ramos with music and lyrics by Michael John LaChuisa, and choreographed by Paul McGill.
The show stars MANY of TFP‘s personal favorite people are amongst the performers, and she is SOOO excited to see it.
Get your tickets here, and get them fast as it only runs till Sept. 29th!
As many New Yorkers now know, famed Laurie Beechman Theater is closing after an incredible run, as is it’s host, West Bank Cafe. To send them off with a bang, everyone’s absolute Favorite Gaysian, Alec Mapa, is bringing his new one man standup show, HA! PENIS! there on Sept 20 & 22nd!
Buy tickets HERE!
What is it about? Well, it is about cancer and his battle with it. This show is about his full recovery, moments of denial, and the ability to decide to continue on – NO MATTER WHAT! It will be joyous. As TFP has never missed an Alec Mapa comedy moment, she will be there – but get your tickets quickly.
The Roundabout Theater will have it’s production of YELLOW FACE by Tony Award Winning Playwright & 3 time Pulitzer Prize Finalist, David Henry Hwang, opening September 13th.
Starring superstar Actor/Producer Daniel Dae Kim. Alongside him are some amazing New York Actors and TFP favs – Francis Jue and Shannon Tyo, as well as Kevin Del Aguila, Ryan Eggold, Marina Anderson, Greg Keller.
Inspired by real events, the playwright’s fictionalized doppelgänger protests yellowface casting in Miss Saigon, only to mistakenly cast a white actor as the Asian lead in his own play. This Obie Award-winning and Pulitzer finalist play is a laugh-out-loud farce about the complexities of race.
Buy Tickets HERE – it is only open till end of November!
But wait – there is MORE, yes MORE AANHPIs On BROADWAY – and this is what TFP was talking about when she wrote that 2024 was going to be the MOST AANHPI BROADWAY EVER IN A YEAR WITHOUT A SHOW SET IN AN ASIAN COUNTRY!
What is this? Why just a NEW MUSICAL with Darren Criss and Helen J. Shen called MAYBE HAPPY ENDING and you can purchase tickets HERE!
What is it about? Two hours.
Ok ok ok – it’s about Robots who fall in love, and it won the Richard Rogers Award – and frankly, that is all TFP needs. Grab those tickets!
Congrats to BRETT CHAN and JOHNNY YANG, the Stunt Coordinators for WARRIOR on HBO –
Nominated for Outstanding Stunt Coordination for Drama Programming
After you get your *ss kicked, you will likely need your boo boos kissed, and what show does that better than Bridgerton on Netflix?
Congrats to Korean Australian Actress, Yerin Ha, who has been cast in the Season Four of BRIDGERTON, as the love interest opposite Benedict Bridgerton, played by Luke Thompson. The plot is – they meet at a masquerade ball. The character, “Sophie” aka “The Lady in Silver” is the illegitimate daughter of an Earl and his maid.
Listen, “by blows’ in British society were very commonplace because of abuse of power between servants and the people they served. However, it feels slightly icky being that she is the first main character of East Asian descent to be portrayed – however, we’ re going to just trust in Shondha Rhimes and remember the character was not written to be East Asian, in the novels she was not a person of color. So let the book go a bit, and just enjoy.
Also this show is very much ‘color conscience’ casting, embracing a mythical society that is better than the one we all inhabit so…TFP is ‘in”
So there, you see? TFP has given you all the feels…all the good stuff- and frankly, there’s more, but she cannot just write about ‘the good stuff’ because, well, she promised Telly Leung that she’d bring something up.
Apologies to Aunt Agnes.
Here’s the thing about writing this blog – facts can be hurtful. That’s the truth. There are many things that TFP has pointed out over the years that have cost her friendships and jobs – and if they are valued friendships, they come back – but the jobs…well, you gotta die some time, as they sang in Falsettos.
Since THE GILDED AGE by Julian Fellows has been running – for two seasons now, and currently filming the 3rd – TFP has wrestled with the truth again and again – which is, there are no AANHPIs in the cast.
She is not saying the cast is not diverse – just that there seem to be no AANHPIs and specific to the time period, no Chinese – nor do there seem to be Latinx or Native American descended actors there either.
There are African Americans in the cast, rightly so – because they belong there, because there was a documented society of rich African Americans in New York and we very luckily get to follow the journey of Ms. Peggy Scott, played by Denèe Beton, to take us in to this world. This third season will expand on that world with the addition of Broadway luminaries like Leslie Uggams, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Lisa Gay Hamiilton and Phylicia Rashad – and TFP loves that – because it proves that New York City has a large tapestry of people, and always has.
It is right and just to show that history, even in fictitious dramas.
TFP loves history, and she is a huge Fellows fan, AND she knows people in the cast – which is why it gets…tricky to write about. As an audience member, she truly loves the show, however she also looks at it and thinks ‘that’s a show I will never be called in to audition for’.
Because of her heritage.
The basic argument is that there aren’t any Chinese in New York’s High Society at that time. This is true – there are none amongst the famed 400.
However, New York is a port city – and as we all know, port cities allow for travel – and New York was allowing immigration and travel from China. Amongst China’s wealthy it was required to speak other languages, and travel – just like it is with every group that has wealth. As we all know from Crazy Rich Asians, there are fortunes in China that predate America itself, because of generational wealth. Business, as they say, is business – in addition to making ‘strange bedfellows’, and no one was better at business in the Gilded Age, than the robber barons.
So storyline, what could be the interaction?
There could be a robber baron that has to entertain a diplomat, or a robber baron that deals with trade from China in some way, perhaps in addition to importing deeply discounted labor that they would blow up in the rail road construction. Mayhap they need to deal with the people that made their fortunes on the backs of those who were trying to escape the chaos in China at the time?
( Oh yes, in constructing the rail road, they had to blow passages up in mountains, and who ‘set the dynamite’?
The Chinese did, once they came.
They set the dynamite in the mountain to clear it, but to save money, the fuses were cut short and they would have to run to get out before the mountain collapsed on them, so odds were, they would not make it back.)
Or you could borrow a page from Warrior‘s books, and have an incident where the Tongs cross paths with a Gilded Age series regular?
Oh in case you are confused by what was previously stated -yes, they buried the Chinese in the mountains to build the transcontinental railroad. That is where the term “a Chinaman’s chance‘ came from – as in, you have a Chinaman’s chance = no chance at all. (You can watch more on this phrase with author, Eric Liu)
Yes, the Chinese are there in The Gilded Age – they are just the undercurrent fueling the rail road. The coal thrown in to burn to nothing, but allow travel to continue, allow commerce….all the while becoming ash.
Did you know that when the actual Transcontinental Railroad was completed, the workers went through the town massacring the Chinese workers so that they could not be in the historic photo? That is true. It is called the Rocks Springs Massacre.
Here is an illustration of the event- Illustration of Rock Springs Massacre in Harper’s Weekly, Sept. 26, 1885. Artist: Thur de Thulstrup. Prints and Photographs Division.
You see – in American History there is a pesky fact that IS covered in the show, WARRIOR – also aired on HBO – that deals with the Chinese specifically (although yes, not all the Asian diaspora was Chinese, there was the odd Japanese or Filipino sailor here and there) and their purpose originally in this country, was to build things and die or build things and go back to where they came from.
They were brought to build the rail road.
They were brought over to undercut the American workers – Irish, African American and other immigrants from Europe – who were already building the Rail roads.
Rail roads are a ‘thing’ in The Gilded Age. They fund that magnificent house Bertha & George Russell own, the one Bertha commissioned to be built. The house that is an affront to “Old Money”.
Who owns the rail roads?
As per the show, George Russell (Played by Morgan Spector) is a builder of rail roads – in fact, it was when the building of a rail road alongside another rail road- in order to simply bankrupt a competitor of George Russell -in the first season as a plot point, that TFP mused to herself, ‘there are the invisible Asians building that rail road’. In point of fact, 12,000 Chinese workers were brought over to build the rail road.
The interesting thing is – they do not even mention Chinese Rail Road workers – and Mr. Russell is a man of the world – and he would know, would he not, that his rail road employs Chinese workers? He was sending out the Pinkertons to make sure Unions didn’t happen in Pittsburgh, that part was shown.
Not only is George Russell a ‘man of the world’, he is a Robber Baron.
In America in the 1880’s, the Robber Barrons were running rampant across the country and across American society, unable to be stopped.
Andrew Carnegie was one such man -yes he was, even though now we know of him as a man who sponsored all sorts of education for the poor through public works. He did not start out that way, ahem.(Full disclosure, TFP is a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University) The term Robber Baron included Cornelius Vanderbuilt and John Rockerfeller – any surnames strike a chord in Gilded Age viewers? Hold on then…because John Jacob Astor is considered America’s first Robber Baron...now, do you understand the show a bit better?
JJ dealt in fur trading and later, opium – with China. (Not very demure. Not very mindful.)
Here is the exact definition of the term, if you are unfamiliar – and it is from Webster’s Dictionary.
Factually speaking, John Jacob Astor and his descendants ‘could’ have some sort of relationship with the Chinese people – particularly given that at this time in America, there were Opium dens.
Where there were dens, there were addicts – and given that there were no television series to binge watch and communicable diseases were communicated like wildfire – many ‘bored’ rich white people did indulge in opium – a fact which you do see in the HBO show, WARRIOR, just not in The Gilded Age.
People also indulged in b*tshit cures for said STDs and no one loves a Chinatown more than a person who needs a miracle. The great treatment that is acupuncture, and herbs and tinctures, would all be found in Chinatown – however there is nary a whisper of it.
The denizens of The Gilded Age never mention Chinatown – not even as a place to go to indulge or as the place their laundry is done. However if you look at other shows set in that time period – in COPPER for instance, set in Five Points, they very much do mention it – THE ALIENIST, opium and Chinatown are also mentioned.
Do the Chinese play main characters in those shows? No, but they are mentioned. Sometimes they are portrayed. The Chinese are a part of the New York fabric – or do you not eat noodles? We have been a part of New York City, documented, since the 1870’s.
Warrior, in fact, does an excellent job of showcase the racism that the Chinese have faced since they have come to this country – and by not showing or mentioning the existence of any Asians of any kind, The Gilded Age in fact, shows that exclusion is just as vibrant now as then. It is just as painful.
Even though the fortunes of one of it’s main characters, the Astors, are directly tied to dealing with China and dealing opium, the audience would never know it.
TFP is not making any of this up – it is history – legit American history – the very premise the show is built on.
Chinese immigrants were first documented in New York City in the 1830’s. In 1847 three Chinese students arrived in New York, and one of them became the first Chinese person to graduate from a US College – in 1854. In 1848, two men and one woman arrived as silk merchants.
In the 1870’s, there was a large influx of Chinese immigrants to New York City, and NY Chinatown was established. It grew out of the Five Points neighborhood, and developed quite a reputation for crime, prostitution, and drug use. ALSO though – businesses.
Businesses that did not charge as much as others further uptown. If there was a cheaper place to get the ‘very same thing’, in a neighborhood likely to have been the origin point for the servants who immigrated from Ireland, would you believe the servants would not know how to get it? And possibly pocket the difference?
BTW, TFP is of Chinese and Irish heritage – she is not ‘half’ of anything, she is an entirety of both. She is familiar with Irish American history as well.
You mean to say, I mean, you mean to say that a woman like Agnes Van Rhijn or Bertha Russell had no idea how to save a few dollars by sending their washing downtown to the Chinese? That does not track.
No one is cheaper than rich people.
The Gilded Age is set in the 1880’s in New York City – at a time when New York City had a bustling Chinatown.
In fact the term, ‘China Town’, was first used by the New York Times in 1880 to describe the three streets – Mott, Pell, and Doyers. Many of the earlier arrivals of Chinese descent had first arrived on the West Coast and traveled East following the anti-Chinese riots of 1877 in San Francisco.
(Y’all really need to watch WARRIOR on HBO – nominated btw for an EMMY this year), the gold rush, and the building of transcontinental rail road.
Here is a photo of New York’s Chinatown in the 1800’s. Founded in part by Chinese who had fled the West Coast – rail road workers who had survived, that were now on the East Coast.
Chinese rail road workers in New York City? Yes, they were some of the first founders of New York Chinatown, fact.
How this is not part of a plot used by George Russell or his rivals to undercut the East Coast workers of Pennsylvania TFP does not know. As undercutting white workers with Chinese labor is what George Russell, Robber Baron, would have done, in addition to sending the Pinkertons.
However we never see the Chinese. Not even with Oscar, and given what that character has to go through, he would be likely to spend some time in Chinatown, because he would have been allowed to indulge without judgement there.
TFP is fully aware that there were no Chinese people in “The 400” and this is not a swipe at any actor on the show, she adores the show. Particularly as it is filled with theater people, and TFP loves theater actors getting television money!
However New York is a character in this show, just as much as Mrs. Astor – and to fail to mention or even reference a vital community that has been and continues to be part of New York?
That’s just not kosher.
Ah well, TFP is not going to over think it – she is going to concentrate on the Election.
TFP hopes Mr. Fellows continues to show us New York City in the 1800’s – all parts of it. He likely will not, but for the vibrantly rich talent pool of AANHPI Theater Actors – TFP really wishes he would.
She wishes the show a long and rich run – she would just like to see slices of New York that she would recognize.
Now, go make sure you are registered to VOTE – and Vote like your reproductive health, social security, pensions, and ability to have health care depend on it – because they do.
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