A play on YouTube? 'Yellow Face' debuts, starring Christopher Gorham

Los Angeles Times, By David Ng June 10, 2013

Plays are routinely adapted for the movies and television. But a YouTube adaptation of a stage drama is something new.

In a small theater on the campus of East Los Angeles College, actor Christopher Gorham was performing a scene from the David Henry Hwang play "Yellow Face" over and over again as a camera crew went through several set-ups of the dialogue-heavy sequence.

It was near the end of a three-week shoot that took place in late December. Gorham, who was on hiatus from the USA Network series "Covert Affairs," was playing the part of Marcus, a white actor who is mistakenly cast as an Asian character in the play-within-the-play. Sitting next to him in the scene was actor Ryun Yu, playing the role of a playwright suggestively named "DHH."

The action was being shot on the theater's mostly bare stage, with scenery to be added digitally in post-production. With each take, Gorham went through a series of perplexed expressions as his character tried to go along with the playwright's insistence that Marcus -- all appearances to the contrary -- is of Asian descent.
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