The Japanese Journal of American Studies, No. 34 (2023)

Copyright © 2023 The Japanese Association for American Studies. All rights reserved.

The Yellow Jacket (1912): Chinese Opera as Techne in
Early Twentieth-Century American Theatre*
Yoshiko UZAWA**
This paper addresses the issue of cultural borrowing by examining The
Yellow Jacket, one of the ﬁrst American yellowface dramas inspired by
Chinese Opera staging methods. Written by two American playwrights,
Joseph Harry Benrimo and George C. Hazelton Jr, it premiered on
Broadway in 1912 under Benrimo’s direction, and by the 1920s, it achieved
phenomenal success as an American avant-garde high-art drama.
Set in an imaginary old China where supernatural magic permeates,
the story of The Yellow Jacket is undoubtedly a product of American
Orientalism. That is, however, not all there seems to be to this play. Paying
suﬃcient attention to the play’s local, personal, and international history
leads to the understanding that The Yellow Jacket was the most original
attempt to imitate (though in a limited form) Eastern culture in a way that
had never been tried before. The 1910s was the era of early modernism,
during which the East and the West inﬂuenced each other. Chinese
theatres on both sides of the Paciﬁc increasingly adopted Western realism
eliminating the extra-theatrical elements such as Jianchang (Chinese
visible stagehand), for example, from their stages. In contrast, as the caseof The Yellow Jacket shows, Western theatre attempted to analyze, imitate,or incorporate Chinese (in particular Cantonese) traditional theatrical
techne (visible silent stagehands, visible musicians, self-introductory
soliloquy, miming, and minimum stage set and props), often deliberately
or unintentionally inventing new hybrid, metatheatrical traditions out ofcreative mis/reading.

*A shorter version of this paper was presented as a keynote speech, “The Yellow Jacket(1912) and Asian Theatre as Techne,” at the 56th Annual Meeting of The Japanese
Association for American Studies held at Chuo University on 4 June 2022.
** Professor, Keio University, and President (2020–2022) of the Japanese Association for
American Studies

29

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YOSHIKO UZAWA

1.

INTRODUCTION

The Yellow Jacket is one of the first American yellowface dramas
inspired by Chinese Opera. Written by two American playwrights, Joseph
Harry Benrimo and George C. Hazelton Jr., it premiered on Broadway in
New York in November 1912 under Benrimo’s direction. As its subtitle “A
Chinese Play Done in a Chinese Manner” suggests, it was promoted as thefirst full-fledged endeavor by American writers to adopt traditional Chinese
Opera staging methods. The play received favorable reviews but only lasted
a few weeks on its first run. Benrimo, determined to make it a success,
immediately took it to Europe.
In March 1913, the European tour began in London. Over the next few
decades, The Yellow Jacket was translated into more than ten languages andperformed in various European and Russian cities. Top-notch directors such
as Max Reinhardt (Berlin), Gustav Lindemann (Düsseldorf), and Alexander
Tairov (Moscow) participated in the production and direction of the play.
The phenomenal success of its European tour led to international acclaimof The Yellow Jacket as an American avant-garde experimental drama.1
Meanwhile, The Yellow Jacket had several successful revivals in the U.S.
During its first revival run in 1916, the New York Times called it “ThePlay That Went Round the World.”2 By the end of the 1920s, the play had
been staged not only in the U.S. and Europe, but in Chile and other Latin
American countries and even in Japan and China.3
In this paper I will consider the issue of cultural borrowing by examining
this American-made mock Chinese drama as a case study. Culturalborrowing includes imitation, mimicry, translation, transplantation,
adaptation, assimilation, appropriation, mistranslation, and reinvention ofother cultures. The Yellow Jacket is a classic example of the West imitating
the East and appropriating Eastern cultural capital. But that is not all there
seems to be to this play. By paying sufficient attention to the local, personal,
and intercultural history of The Yellow Jacket, we may be able to view thisunique faux drama from a more multifaceted perspective. For better orworse, white performers acting in yellowface or playing Chinese on theAmerican stage in the early twentieth century was a way for the West to
attempt to engage with (and frequently exploit) the East; and in so doing,
the complex, but not necessarily one-way relationship between the two
cultures was variously fictionalized. Among many such dramas, The Yellow
Jacket emerged as a most (if not the most) original attempt to imitate (oreven emulate) Eastern cultures in a way that had never been done before.

THE YELLOW JACKET (1912)31

And as the West chose to engage with the East, the East also engaged with
the West (often out of necessity) in the late nineteenth and early twentiethcenturies. For example, it was often the case that Asian theatre companies
from China or Japan would temporarily or on an ongoing basis adjust theirtraditional repertoire to promote their culture to foreign and international
audiences.
The 1910s was the era of so-called “early modernism.” Asia was adestination in which Western artists and playwrights were seeking what tothem would be new forms and ideas that would revolutionize traditional
Western stages. However asymmetrical their relationship might be, theEast and the West influenced each other from the late nineteenth century
onward. The California gold rush that began in 1848 led to increased
Asian immigration to the Pacific Rim, and cultural traffic expanded in thelate nineteenth century. After the 1880s, even with growing exclusionism
toward Asian immigrants, cultural border crossings took place in the U.S.
in various forms. The Yellow Jacket was one among many such cases. At
its 1912 premiere in New York, Chinese theatres in San Francisco, which
had inspired the young Benrimo, had an over fifty-year history. On bothsides of the Pacific, traditional Chinese theatre tried to reinvent itself byintroducing Western realism and female performers to the stage. In contrast,
as the case of The Yellow Jacket shows, Western theatre attempted toanalyze, imitate, or incorporate Chinese, in particular Cantonese, traditional
theatrical techne (arts, crafts, and concepts behind them), often deliberately
or unintentionally inventing a new hybrid tradition out of creative (mis)reading.
2. THE MOCK-CHINESE “PROPERTY MAN”: WHAT HE CAN AND CANNOT DO
The Yellow Jacket is undoubtedly a product of American Orientalism.
Set in an imaginary old “China” where supernatural magic permeates,
the drama tells the story of Wu Hoo Git, the eldest son of the Governor(also called the “Emperor” in the play) of this fictional ancient feudalistic
society. Wu Hoo Git’s growth, or, to use Benrimo’s metaphor, his “Pilgrim’s
Progress,” from tragically orphaned babyhood to super-human adulthood,comprises the play’s main plot.4 As is often the case with this type ofheroic fantasy, the protagonist’s life is anything but easy. Wu Hoo Git
is destined to face many ordeals before he attains his goals. He naively
pursues true passion and desires to know who he is. His first love with abeautiful prostitute ends up fruitless. He attempts suicide but is saved and32

YOSHIKO UZAWA

eventually finds his true love in a young woman named Moy Fah Loy (akaPlum Blossom). It is almost at the risk of his life that he wins a series ofbattles against the fantastic monsters (such as Giant Spider, Human-Tiger,
God of Thunder, etc.), supernatural proxies of his aesthetic half-brothercum-wizard Daffodil (Wu Fah Din). Eventually, the hero regains his stolen
birthright (i.e., the throne), banishes his half-brother Daffodil to the flower
garden, and marries Plum Blossom; thus, the drama comes to a happy
ending. The harsher the ordeals, the larger than life the hero appears inovercoming them.
The play’s plotline is typical of many heroic fantasy dramas that can befound in many countries’ folklore or legends, not necessarily in China’s
alone. Thus, what made The Yellow Jacket seem exotic and sufficiently“Chinese” to appeal to American audiences in the 1910s was not its story,
but its staging, which Benrimo partially “adopted” from Chinese Opera.
And Benrimo faced considerable challenges in attempting to adopt Chinese
Opera forms to the American stage. First and foremost, acting, reciting,singing, acrobatics, and martial arts (especially sword play)—essentials ofChinese Opera—require talent, years of study, and rigorous training of theactors. Benrimo could not possibly find white American actors with suchskills at that time.
However, there are always some aspects of acting and directing methodsof one culture that can be studied, imitated, and even partially incorporated
by someone from another culture. Stylized miming or pantomime in
Chinese Opera was such an element that Benrimo could incorporate into
his play. Mime is a universal language, that beginners of the art can atleast understand, even if it is difficult for them to execute. Very noticeablein The Yellow Jacket is the minimal number of onstage props. The actors
must mime situations such as riding horses, opening and closing imaginary
doors, moving around the stage to indicate a shift in location, and fighting
symbolic combats.5 The numerous stage directions for mimes in the scriptof The Yellow Jacket, common with or similar to those in Chinese Opera,suggest that The Yellow Jacket attempts to imitate or copy at least some of
the Chinese figurative acting styles and stagecraft.6
Therefore, it is no surprise that the role that attracted the most attention
from Western audiences, theatre critics, and the play’s authors in the
production history of The Yellow Jacket is not the lead role but that of the“property man,” who communicates through mime. Benrimo and Hazelton
maintain that they “borrowed bodily” this role from the Chinese theatre.7 As
inferred from this given name, the property man in The Yellow Jacket is a

THE YELLOW JACKET (1912)33

stagehand who provides and handles props. He performs his job in full viewof the audience under the implicit rule of “invisibility.” The Chorus explains
this rule to the novice audience at the outset of the drama: “Ere departing
my footsteps hence, let me impress upon you that my property man is toyour eyes intensely invisible.”8
The property man is silent but mimes much more than the other actors
who speak the dialogue. He wears sober worker’s clothes of blue denim,in stark contrast to the serene scholars’ garments worn by the Chorus andthe opulent Chinese Opera costumes worn by the leading actors. Always
aloof and indifferent to the drama’s storyline, the property man is a jackof-all-trades who anticipates scene changes and acts accordingly. He andhis crew perform several actions very typical of Chinese Opera, such asbuilding a castle in the air, floating a love boat on the River of Love, andmaking alpine mountains using simple chairs and tables. The property
man holds a ladder for the actors to climb in the tearful death scenes. Thisladder climbing is probably a mock-Chinese stunt devised by Benrimo torepresent the actor’s symbolic ascent to heaven, though in reality “heaven”
is only four rungs up the ladder. The Chorus refers to the “invisibility” ofthe stagehands both at the beginning and the end of the drama, thus framing
the play within the rules of Chinese Opera represented by the property man.
As a nonentity on the stage that the audience supposedly cannot see,the property man in The Yellow Jacket is similar to the traditional Asianstagehands: the Jianchang in Chinese Opera, the koken in Japanese Nohtheatre, and the kuroko in Japanese Kabuki theatre. Simultaneously,
however, the property man of The Yellow Jacket deviates from his Asianmodels in that he can turn himself into a comic role that wreaks havoc onstage regardless of what is taking place in the storyline. This trait made him
both eye-catching and controversial to Western audiences. Edward Gordon
Craig, a prominent British stage designer, saw a London performance of
The Yellow Jacket and criticized its property man for being too conspicuousand inconsistent with traditional Asian stagehands: “…the English property
man is quite contrary to ideas held regarding him in China or Japan. He
has been the play’s central figure and has quite eclipsed the real actors whointerpreted the story. Thus he has produced an effect which is quite theopposite to that intended on the stages of the East.”9
In cross-cultural negotiations, encounters with the unknown are usually
understood through what is already known. If so, were Benrimo andHazelton, well versed in American comedy clichés, trying to create amute deadpan comedian out of nonchalant serious Chinese Jianchang?

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YOSHIKO UZAWA

Or did they find or unconsciously misread Asian stagehands to be funnyby nature? Is it possible that it was the actor, not the scriptwriter, who
held the key to clowning the role of this property handler? The authors’
explanatory foreword to the script of this play does not give us a clear
answer: “The purpose of the creators of this play is to string on a threadof universal philosophy, love, and laughter the jade beads of Chinese
theatrical convention. Their effort has been to reflect the spirit rather than
the substance. To do this, the property man had to be overwrought; theChorus had to be introduced.”10 Even if the actor playing this Americanizedproperty man is “overwrought” so that he can create a parody of theChinese Jianchang, expected moments of laughter he might induce are notclear from the script of the play. The extent to which the audience knows
the traditional theatrical norms for a visible stagehand’s behavior would
also affect the quality and quantity of the laughs.
Many talented comedians, including the renowned Hollywood goofballjester Harpo Marx, have played the role of the property man in The Yellow
Jacket. Accordingly, it would be unreasonable to assume the character was
written as a wholly serious role without any intention of it being played
at least in part as a clown. Yet the extent to which American stagehands
deviated from the norms of Chinese stagehands undoubtedly varied greatly
depending on who played the role.11
At the New York premiere in 1912, Arthur Shaw played the “Property
Man” to great acclaim. That he understood the potential (self-)destructiveness inherent on his part is evident from his comments in
a newspaper interview. He emphasized in the interview that what wasessential in his playing the role of the stagehand was not so much “what hedoes” as “what he does not do.” If he showed even the slightest excitement
about anything other than “his job as a property man,” it “blows the wholeillusion,” and he soon would have been fired.12
Arnold Genthe, known for his photographs of old San Francisco
Chinatown, took stage photographs of the play. In the photo shown in Fig.
1, three men are onstage. Shaw’s property man is in the middle behind thetable. Plainly clothed, with a cigarette in his mouth and chopsticks in his
right hand, he is leisurely serving tea to the actors seated before him, who
are dressed in sumptuous Chinese costumes and heavy makeup. Storywise,
the scene depicts two cunning villains plotting the assassination of theGovernor’s first wife and his eldest son (the main protagonist). This photo
contains contrasting and conflicting details, capturing the play’s divided
and layered worldview (or stage view). The table in the middle separates

THE YELLOW JACKET (1912)

35

Fig. 1. Arnold Genthe, “Scenes from the play called the Yellow Jacket by George C.
Hazelton and Benrimo.” Genthe Photograph Collection, Library of Congress, Prints andPhotographs Division.

the fictional world of the rich plot in the foreground from the paratheatricalworld of the stagehand in the background. Numerous exotic details
coexist, but a closer look reveals inconsistencies. For example, Shaw’s
property man simultaneously plays with a teacup and chopsticks. One
might wonder what the odd combination of these two props has to do withserving tea. The photograph alone demonstrates that even Shaw’s restrained
performance of the property man could easily have disturbed the story andprovoked laughter at any time and place, but only if he chose to do so.
Brander Matthews, a professor of drama studies at Columbia University,
was one of the most respected drama critics in early twentieth-century
America. He wrote an “Introduction” to The Yellow Jacket at the requestof the authors, in which he extolled the dual appeal of an exotic story
presented in the exotic manner of the play. It is worth noting that heapproved of The Yellow Jacket as a Chinese play. Without hesitation,
he asserted: “They [Benrimo and Hazelton] give us a Chinese drama,dealing with Chinese motives, and presented in the Chinese manner.”
To appreciate this exotic play, he continues, the audience goes througha kind of psychological back and forth from laughter to tears, and fromtears to laughter: “With a firm reliance on our appreciation of the exotic,
they invite us to smile at conventions which seem to us ludicrous in theextreme—and then, a moment later, they summon us to use our imagination
to curb our laughter, and to let ourselves be taken captive by the sadplight of the human beings who people their play.”13 Although there isno direct reference to the property man here, it is reasonable to assume
that the visible stagehand in question is among what Matthews calls the

36

YOSHIKO UZAWA“conventions which seem to us ludicrous in the extreme.” Here Matthews
implies that Chinese theatrical conventions repeatedly caused audiences tobe both drawn away from, and attracted to, the play’s story.
According to the Chinese Opera historian Tohru Kato, the Chinese
Jianchang developed as a “necessary evil” to bring props to the stage when
there were no such devices as stage curtains or revolving sets. Unlike
Japanese kuroko or koken, Chinese property men carried tea to the actors
and handed them towels to wipe their sweat during stand-up routines.
Moreover, it was common for the Jianchang to appear in plain clothes andsometimes even half-naked because he was supposed to be invisible to theaudience. When Mei Lanfang gave his first performance of Beijing Opera
in Japan in 1919 at the Imperial Theatre in Tokyo, Japanese audienceswere captivated by his exquisite female impersonating performances. Still,they were duly shocked and perplexed to see a property man in a thin shirt
walking around on stage throughout the performance.14 It is known that Mei
did not use stagehands during his famous U.S. tours in the 1930s, “lest theaudience’s attention be distracted.”15
Often described as a “symbol of the backwardness and sloppiness ofChinese theatre,” Jianchang was also a role whose duties required years ofspecialized training and effort. Like famous actors and musicians, many
Jianchang masters left their names in history. To Japanese and Western
audiences of the early twentieth century, Jianchang could be disturbing
or comically expendable; but to Chinese audiences who, through what
Kato calls “negative imagination,” knew how to avoid paying attention
to extraneous people or objects on the stage, Jianchang was an essentiallyinvisible presence.16
Differing historical circumstances in Western and Chinese theatre at
the time of productions of The Yellow Jacket further complicates ourunderstanding of the role of the property man. Around the same time thestagehand of The Yellow Jacket was celebrated for his fictionality in theWest, the unrealistic Jianchang was banished from the stage in favor of
realism in China. Starting in the late nineteenth century, the influenceof Western realism on Chinese theatre intensified during the periodof the Republic of China (1911–1949), taking the form of eliminating
non-theatrical elements from the audience’s view. Along with visible
stagehands, visible musicians and non-theatrical communication between
actors and audiences during performances were also eliminated from thestage. Thus, regardless of whether the property man in The Yellow Jacket
was played as a parody of a Jianchang, a parody of himself as a ChineseTHE YELLOW JACKET (1912)37

stagehand, or even a twisted American copy of the Chinese original, his
culturally mixed presence evoked the days gone by of the cosmopolitan
Chinese theatre in nineteenth-century San Francisco, that no longer existed
in China itself. It was there in San Francisco that the young Benrimo had
his first experience of crossing cultural borders that piqued his lifelong
interest in Chinese Opera. The mock Chinese stagehand that Benrimo
created remains a reminder of how Chinese actors in the late nineteenth
century were perceived by “foreign” audiences in the old theatres of San
Francisco Chinatown as bewildering, mesmerizing, absurd, or simply
enjoyable.
3. A PHANTOM OF THE CHINESE OPERA
In a 1923 letter to a newspaper reporter, Benrimo attributed his writingof The Yellow Jacket to a particular theatre that left a strong impression in
his childhood memories. It was the Old Chinese Theatre (also called theRoyal Chinese) on Jackson Street in San Francisco Chinatown, which hesaid he frequented in his youth: “The Yellow Jacket is a reflection of mywandering in San Francisco Chinatown as a boy, and of many hours spentin the old Jackson Street Theatre.”17 From its opening in 1867, the Old
Chinese Theatre did such lucrative business (as did other Chinese theatresin the vicinity which opened in the 1870s) in the international tourist cityof San Francisco that it became the flagship Chinese theatre in America. It
became a cultural symbol of both the cosmopolitan city of San Francisco
and the ethnic Chinese immigrant community within the city. The theatre
boasted 1,200 seats, with an architecturally hybrid interior incorporating
Western-style seating and galleries, while the stage was specially designed
for Chinese Opera performances.18 In this theatre, the young Benrimo firstsaw “the actors creating mountains from chairs,” his property man’s Asian
prototypes or role models.19
Benrimo’s experiences at the Old Chinese Theatre may also haveinfluenced his decision to become an actor who played Chinese roles inyellowface dramas. Benrimo played a few minor Chinese roles in Francis
Powers’ The First Born, a drama that realistically portrays family life incontemporary Chinatown. When David Belasco, the eminent stage producer
famous for his realism, purchased the play, Benrimo moved with him to
New York.
However, Benrimo’s childhood memories of the Old Chinese Theatre on
Jackson Street and actually his critique of Belascoesque realism were his

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YOSHIKO UZAWA

inspiration for writing The Yellow Jacket. Benrimo explained:
I was with Belasco, who was a master of detail and realism, every
manager was endeavoring to copy him, and productions became more
and more extravagant in costumes and furnishing….I determined towrite a play in which the audience would have some scope for their
imagination; remembering many hours spent in the old Jackson Street
Theatre with the Chinese actors creating mountains from chairs etc...
the idea occurred to me to write a play in which the story depended
on the actors, and pay the audience the compliment of using their
imagination.20
Indeed, the anti-realistic aspects of The Yellow Jacket influenced later
generations of playwrights. For example, without The Yellow Jacket’s
property man and his spokesperson Chorus, there would have been nostage manager playing the role of the stagehand-cum-narrator in Thornton
Wilder’s experimental anti-illusionist (but non-Orientalist) play Our Town
(1930). And the role of the interpreter-cum-foolish-sage Sakini in the neoOrientalist play The Teahouse of the August Moon (John Patrick’s 1953
dramatization of Vern Snyder’s novel of the same title) would have beenmuch smaller role, as it was in the original novel.21
Yet when The Yellow Jacket premiered at the Fulton Theatre in New York
under Benrimo’s direction, its stage was, albeit in hindsight, full of eerie
realism. As a poster for the 1912 performance of The Yellow Jacket clearlystates, the Fulton stage was set up to replicate the stage of the Old Chinese
Theatre on Jackson Street: “The Scene Represents the Stage of a Chinese
Theatre, Modeled After the Old Jackson Street Theatre, San Francisco.”22
The basic structural similarities are apparent when one compares a photo of
the Fulton stage with a stage photo of the actual Old Chinese Theatre in thelate nineteenth century (Figs. 2 and 3). In both pictures, we find an alcovein the back center (for musicians to play in), an entrance and an exit to thestage, and above the alcove, a vacant square hole which Benrimo explainsrepresents heaven. There are no wings to the stage, which looks quitebare, with minimal props. The wall tapestries are general decorations, notspecifical to any particular scene. In the case of the Fulton stage, one cansee tableau curtains added, which, although not visible in the photo, weresymbolically decorated with a dragon pattern, one on each side, further
adding a Chinoiserie effect.
The 1913 London production of the play used similar scenery but

THE YELLOW JACKET (1912)

39

Fig. 2. The Stage of the Royal China Theatre on Jackson Street in San Francisco(ca. 1880–1890). Digital Archive of Chinese Theater in California

Fig. 3. The stage of The Yellow Jacket at the Fulton Theatre 1912. From Walter Prichard
Eaton, Plays and Players, Leaves from a Critic’s Scrapbook (Cincinnati: Stewart & Kidd
Company, 1916). Pdf. https://www.loc.gov/item/16025167/. Library of Congressdescribed its origin differently as “an exact reproduction of one of the
Principal Theatres in Canton.”23 And in Europe and Russia, the Chineseelements of the staging were not presented realistically but instead in
accord with new anti-realistic aestheticism of the avant-garde theatres.24
It is interesting to consider possible reasons that Benrimo decided todecorate the stage for the New York premiere in the very realistic way that
resembled the Old Chinese Theatre in San Francisco. Did he think that theinterior of the San Francisco theatre would give a frame of ethnographicalauthenticity to his mock “Chinese” drama? Was Benrimo engaging in a
type of architectural yellowface? Was Benrimo paradoxically expressing
non-realism through realism? Or, as Benrimo often stated in newspaper

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YOSHIKO UZAWA

interviews, did he want to express his lasting adoration for Chinese
Opera by literally replicating the Old Chinese Theatre which was one of
his inspirations for writing the play? Perhaps, the answer to all of thesequestions is yes to varying degrees.
The Chinese stage set at the Fulton Theatre as depicted in the photo(Fig. 3) appears both unrealistic and realistic. It looks unrealistic because
the stage looks bare without scenery, curtains, and wings—or even a
couple of chairs and a table to help actors mime. But it also looks genuine
and realistic because it is as if the Old Chinese Theatre had moved to
Broadway. This realistic representation found in the 1912 New York staging
might have appeared eerie to some, because the original Old Chinese
Theatre in San Francisco was no longer extant, having been destroyed by
the 1906 earthquake, six years before. The possibility that the Broadway
staging might be a replica of the Old Chinese Theatre that existed only in
Benrimo’s childhood memories and not in actuality, might have enhanced
the sense of mystery surrounding it.
Benrimo (and Hazelton) must have carefully studied the original Old
Chinese Theatre to create such a replica. With little knowledge of Chinese(let alone Cantonese), he (or they) needed to learn about the Chinese
theatres by reading English books and magazine articles. Fortunately, there
were numerous writings about Chinese theatres in San Francisco in thelatter half of the nineteenth century. The Chinatown theatres advertised
their programs in English-language newspapers, invited socially influential
figures both in and out of Chinatown as guests of honor, and employedinterpreters as needed, all as part of a series of deliberate efforts to open
its venues to white and international audiences. As a result, ethnographic
accounts, journalistic reportage, tourist guides, and comments on theatrical
traditions of Chinese Opera spread. In these texts, Chinese Opera was often
compared to Elizabethan theatres in terms of bare stage sets with minimal
props and all-male casts. Henry Burden McDowell also mentioned thesetwo points in his Century Magazine article “The Chinese Theater,” which
Benrimo read and clipped for future rereading. He called McDowell’s
article “the actual genesis of ‘The Yellow Jacket.’”25
Productions of The Yellow Jacket featured both actors and actresses andthus did not have all male casts as was traditionally the case in Chinese
Opera. But besides its barebones setting, it also had one more thing incommon with Shakespeare’s plays: the soliloquy technique, in which theactors speak directly to the audience. Not only did the Chorus speak directly
to the audience, but individual characters also introduced themselves to theTHE YELLOW JACKET (1912)

41

audience upon their first appearances. For instance, when the Governor first
appears on the stage, he speaks in the following manner:
I am the most important personage in this play. Therefore, I address
you first. By your gracious leave, with many apologies, I will state inall modesty, for your edification only, for of course I know who I am
and how great and august I am, while you are not so favored, that I am
Wu Sin Yin, the Great.26
This soliloquy form of self-introduction is a well-known way for characters
to express themselves in Chinese Opera, as well as in Japanese Kabuki andKyogen theatres. The first sentence clearly shows that the Governor knows
he is a character in the play. And this self-conscious soliloquy derived
from Chinese theatrical tradition, with a world-as-drama perspective isreminiscent of Shakespeare’s famous phrase, “All the world’s a stage.” Theline “I know who I am and how great and august I am” reveals the selfdirection of the Governor. The line “you are not so favored” to an audience
indicates that he is an actor playing the Governor in front of audiences hetreats as his subjects. The eminent playwright and critic Lionel Abel would
later call this form of theatre, in which the actor is entirely self-aware ofhis participation in self-dramatization, “metatheatre.” In Abel’s words,
metatheatre is: “the necessary form for dramatizing characters who, having
full self-consciousness, cannot but participate in their own dramatization.
Hence the famous line of Jaques, Shakespeare’s philosopher of metatheatre,‘All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.’”27
If metatheatre is defined as theatre that is conscious of its being theatre,then one of the first embodiments of (intercultural) metatheatre in the U.S.
may have been The Yellow Jacket at the Fulton Theatre in 1912. Looking
at the photos of the Old Chinese Theatre on Jackson Street and the Fulton
Theatre on Broadway, one wonders if the stage Benrimo wanted to create
then was not just an authentic replica or memento but a mirror stage of his
intercultural metatheatrical frame of mind. The Yellow Jacket is a dramaof cultural borrowing of theatrical and architectural techne over racial,
geographical, and historical borders. And Benrimo’s 1912 New Yorkproduction of the play shows us how extraordinarily difficult yet excitingly
rewarding that can be to realize.

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YOSHIKO UZAWA

NOTE
1Regarding The Yellow Jacket’s change of genres from popular entertainment to avantgarde high art, see Ju Yon Kim, The Racial Mundane: Asian American Performance and the
Embodied Everyday (New York: New York University Press, 2015), 25–70. Kim examines
the play’s double veins of symbolic (unrealistic) stagecraft and Chinese “racial mundane”
realistically enacted on stage. See also Dongshin Chang, Representing China on the
Historical London Stage (New York: Routledge, 2015), 140–79. Chang points out London
audiences found in The Yellow Jacket another “Chinaface novelty” despite its attempts atinnovation. Erika Fischer Lichte examines the play’s European productions focusing on therule of the supposed invisibility of the property man. See “What Are the Rules of the Game?
Some Remarks on The Yellow Jacket,” Theatre Survey 36, no. 1 (1995): 21–36. doi:10.1017/
S0040557400006463. Regarding European reception of the play, see also Min Tian, The
Poetics of Diﬀerence and Displacement: Twentieth-Century Chinese-Western Intercultural
Theatre (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2008), 27–30.
2“The Play That Went Round the World,” New York Times (26 November 1916): X7.
3
There are records of Asian performances in Shanghai in 1914 (by professional andamateur actors), as well as Beijing in 1916–17 and Yokohama in 1917 (the latter two
by amateur actors, whose racial and ethnic identities to date are unknown as are otherproduction details). “The Record of The Yellow Jacket,” in George C. Hazelton and Benrimo,
The Yellow Jacket: A Chinese Play Done in a Chinese Manner in Three Acts (New York:
Samuel French, 1940), 116–17.
4
Benrimo, “Legend and Truth: The Facts About ‘The Yellow Jacket,’” New York Times (4November 1928): 118.
5
Instead of the acrobatics and swordplay of Chinese Opera, The Yellow Jacket uses
dancing in slow motion to represent the battle scenes.
6
For example, detailed stage directions for mimes using “a whip, a banner, and a fan” (inthe scene of the villainous Tai Fah Min coming to the Governor’s Palace) read: “Loud crashof cymbals: curtain on door left is lifted and Tai Fah Min enters followed by two men; hecarries a whip and does pantomime of riding and driving a horse; one of the men who follow
him carries a banner inscribed with Chinese characters; this banner is red; the other carriesa large fan on a stick; he comes down to left, then crosses right, then to center; goes throughbusiness of dismounting his horse, throwing his leg high in the air; the property man assists
him and helps his man hold his supposed horse; he lays his whip on the ground behind him;
during all this, music.” George C. Hazelton and Benrimo, The Yellow Jacket: A Chinese PlayDone in a Chinese Manner in Three Acts. Illustrated with Photographs by Arnold Genthe(Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1913), 10.
7
Benrimo, “Legend and Truth,” 118.
8
Hazelton and Benrimo, The Yellow Jacket, 1913, 4.
9“Puppets in Japan,” The Mask 6 (1913–1914): 217; cited in Olga Taxidou, The Mask:
A Periodical Performance by Edward Gordon Craig (Amsteldijk, Netherlands: Harwood
Academic Publishers, 1998), 109. Taxidou maintains that Craig had his own personal reason
to criticize the property man in The Yellow Jacket, that is to justify himself as an “Artistof a Theatre.” Craig additionally criticized The Yellow Jacket’s “Chinoiserie,” cynicallyremarking that it made a “nice parody of the Chinese theatre.” See also Min Tian, “Gordon
Craig, Mei Lanfang and the Chinese Theatre,” Theatre Research International 32, no. 2(2007): 172–73.
10Hazelton and Benrimo, “Foreword” to The Yellow Jacket, 1913, n.p. (italics added).
11
The 1941 production of The Yellow Jacket by the North Shore Playhouse in
Massachusetts starred Harpo Marx as the property man. Marx was known to have turned

THE YELLOW JACKET (1912)43

the role into slapstick comedy in the ﬁnal performance. During the run, Marx had become
increasingly frustrated with the limited and tiring work of the stagehand and sarcasticallyreferred to The Yellow Jacket as a “Straight Jacket.” Near the end of the ﬁnal performance,
Marx chose to play the property man as a typical Harpo Marx character, and he boasted in
his autobiography that he created great laughter by inserting a long improvisation in which
he poured tons of confetti from his pocket and a bucket one after another over an actor
playing dead on the stage. See Harpo Marx with Rowland Barber, Harpo Speaks! (NewYork: Limelight Editions, 1985), 410–14. Min Tian ﬁnds in The Yellow Jacket a case of“intercultural parody” of Chinese Opera. See The Poetics of Diﬀerence and Displacement,
27–30. By contrast, Krystyn Moon sees The Yellow Jacket as the ﬁrst American work thatwas not a parody of Chinese theatre, both musically and in its introduction of Chinese Operastaging into early twentieth-century American theatre. See Krystyn Moon, Yellowface:
Creating the Chinese in American Popular Music and Performance, 1850s–1920s (New
Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2005), 95–96.
12“Acting, Acting, All the Time, But Not a Word to Speak,” New York Times (1December 1912): 119.
13
Brander Matthews, “Introduction” to The Yellow Jacket, 1913, n.p.
14
Tohru Kato, Kyogeki: “Seiji no kuni” no haiyu gunzo [Beijing opera: a group of actors in
the “political country”] (Tokyo: Chuokoron-Shinsha, 2002), 129–32, 148–58.
15
Tan Ye, Historical Dictionary of Chinese Theater (Lanham, MD: Rowman andLittleﬁeld, 2020), 202. This may also be related to the Chinese theatrical movement to“purify” the theatre in the period of the Republic of China (1911–1949).
16
Kato, Kyogeki, 151. Kato maintains that “Chinese audiences were skilled not onlyin imagining what was not on stage but in exercising negative imagination of not-seeing
the visible superﬂuities on stage.” (My translation into English, emphasis added.) He also
refers to some old rare episodes in which a clown uses the stagehand as a surrogate for othercharacters in the story, making the “invisible” stagehand appear comical to the Chineseaudience.
17“How Benrimo Wrote ‘The Yellow Jacket,’” San Francisco Examiner (6 January 1924):
4E.
18
See Nancy Yunhwa Rao, Chinatown Opera Theater in North America (Urbana andChicago: University of Illinois Press, 2017), 46–59.
19“How Benrimo Wrote ‘The Yellow Jacket,’” 4E.
20“How Benrimo Wrote ‘The Yellow Jacket,’” 4E.
21
The Yellow Jacket was further adapted into The Legend of Wu Chang by Tisa Chang,a Chinese American actress and director. The Legend was presented by the Pan AsianRepertory Theatre at La Mama in New York in 1977. There were no major changes tothe storyline, but the production incorporated more elements of Chinese Opera, such as
acrobatics, martial arts, and ribbon play. All roles were played by Asian or Asian American
actors. A few musicians played drums and cymbals, and they also worked as stagehands asneeded on stage. See Mel Gussow, “Oﬀ Oﬀ Broadway: Pan-Asian Troupe Visits La Mama,”
New York Times (October 14, 1977): 57. Regarding the Pan Asian Repertory Theatre andtheir production history of intercultural theatrical works, see Esther Kim Lee, A History of
Asian American Theatre (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 82–91.
22
A poster for the Fulton Theatre production of The Yellow Jacket. Joseph Harry Benrimo
Papers, New York Public Library.
23
Ashley Thorpe, Performing China on the London Stage: Chinese Opera and Global
Power, 1759–2008 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 75. Thorpe maintains thatimperialist subjugation is implicit in this change of descriptions of the scenery.
24
Max Reinhardt, perhaps the most inﬂuential director of The Yellow Jacket in Europe,

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YOSHIKO UZAWA

built a more abstract stage set at the Kammerspiele in 1914. Tairov’s 1913 production did not
attempt to recreate Chinese theatrical settings realistically either. See Min Tian, The Poetics
of Diﬀerence and Displacement, 27–30.
25
Benrimo, “Legend and Truth,” 118. The Yellow Jacket borrows the Chinese opera
history summary from Henry Burden McDowell’s “The Chinese Theater,” Century
Magazine Vol. 29, no. 1 (November 1884): 27–44. See also Daphne P. Lei, Operatic China:
Staging Chinese Identity across the Paciﬁc (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 68–75,
for a comparative reading regarding the intercultural analogy between Chinese Opera andShakespearean plays discussed in typical theatre critics’ articles, including McDowell’s(in the period from the 1850s to the 1940s). Analyzing these texts, Lei points out that theanalogy in stage convention between Chinese theatre and Shakespearean theatre does notgive equal ground to the former; hence, “Shakespeare becomes a tool of an internalized
xenophobia” (75). See also Rao, Chinatown Opera Theater in North America, Part I, chapter
2.
26
Hazelton and Benrimo, The Yellow Jacket, 1913, 5–6.
27
Lionel Abel, Metatheatre: A New View of Dramatic Form (New York: Hill andWang, 1963), 78.