White Pearl by Anchuli Felicia King

Abstract

Reviewed by: White Pearl by Anchuli Felicia King Jenna Gerdsen WHITE PEARL. By Anchuli Felicia King. Directed by Desdemona Chiang. Studio Theatre, Milton Theatre, Washington, D.C. December 13, 2019. In the final moments of White Pearl, a smartphone and fried chicken flew across Studio Theatre’s stage. Desdemona Chiang’s staging of Felicia Anchuli King’s play literally left Washington audiences with the gross impact of globalization. The production explored the violent and unchecked reach of globalization through the perspective of diasporic Asian women. Chiang and King demonstrated Asian women’s influence on the global economy, provided a nuanced dramatization of diasporic Asian women, and highlighted Asian American theatre’s ongoing global turn. The play follows six Asian and Asian American female employees of Clearday, a Singaporean cosmetic company, as they furiously address a leaked skin whitening cream advertisement that uses blackface in a poor attempt at humor. This public relations nightmare becomes intertwined with their own interpersonal conflicts and cultural values. An online debate ensues about the ad’s level of offensiveness, which creates chaos among the women and illuminates the internalized misogyny, intra-racism, and anti-blackness found across Asian communities. King’s satirical commentary on global capitalism and the beauty industry (which she based on a racist 2016 ad for a skin whitening cream from a Thai cosmetic company) fills an important gap in Asian American theatre and is a much-needed contribution to Western theatre. Although King is not Asian American, her collaboration with an Asian American director invites critical discussions of Asian American theatre and its global trajectory. In 1993, Asian American director Roberta Uno stated that Asian American theatre has changed from a fine, nearly invisible thread to a sturdy one, stretching across the Pacific and acting as a dynamic cultural continuum. Asian American theatre scholars such as Josephine Lee and Daphne Lei have challenged the geocultural boundaries of the genre. Lee has analyzed Asian playwrights of Hawaii, many of whom do not identify as Asian American, while Lei has examined the work of Chinese American playwright David Henry Hwang in a transnational context. Scholars have questioned the productivity of exclusively using cultural and national boundaries to define Asian American theatre because it relegates it to an ethnic or minority theatre within American multiculturalism. The occasion of Studio Theatre’s White Pearl allows for a reevaluation of Asian American theatre’s development within the context of globalization, where there is more opportunity for actors and flexibility around representing Asian-identifying people. White Pearl extends the cultural continuum first established by Asian playwrights of Hawaii and the US mainland. Not only does King undercut assumptions of Asian homogeneity, but she also shows Asian and Asian American women as intermediaries of a Black/White paradigm. The collaboration between the Chinese American Chiang and Thai Australian King deepened this continuum by magnifying how Asian women exist in a troubling, liminal state between perpetrator and victim of racism and sexism. Click for larger view View full resolution Jody Doo (Sunny Lee), Diana Huey (Built Suttikul), Shanta Parasuraman (Priya Singh), and Resa Mishina (Ruki Minami) (l-r) in White Pearl. (Photo: Teresa Wood.) In this production, “Clearday” was projected onto a gray wall upstage and framed by a plexiglass double door. The projection signified the company’s pledge to “make skin clear and bright,” and the wall emphasized the women’s racial in-betweenness, positioning them in a moral gray area. This door acted as an insightful signpost, informing the audience that this pledge was present with every step they take. The set displayed the performers’ reflections and shadows, embedding them in the [End Page 347] building like phantoms. The office became their haunt, and a haunting reminder that Asian women have unconsciously become subject to ideology and are complicit in upholding whiteness as the ideal standard of beauty. Under Chiang’s direction, White Pearl highlighted the problematic inbetweeness of Asian women. Previously, Asian American plays like Julio Cho’s BFE and Diana Son’s R.A.W. have critiqued the racism underlying Western standards of beauty and cast Asian women as victims, but King shows Asian women as perpetrators and complex figures in a warped industry. Indian...