JULY 3 - 27, 2025
Yankee Dawg You Die
By Philip Kan Gotanda
Yankee Dawg You Die
By Philip Kan Gotanda
Presented at the David Henry Hwang Theater
July 3 - July 27, 2025
Opening Night July 6, 2025
East West Players presents a timely revival of Philip Kan Gotanda's Yankee Dawg You Die. This groundbreaking play, returning to the stage in July 2025, illustrates the complex, often fraught journey of Asian American actors in Hollywood. Through the lens of an unlikely friendship between two artists, Vincent Chang and Bradley Yamashita, at different stages of their careers, Gotanda's masterful storytelling exposes the painful compromises actors make to succeed in the industry.
First performed in 1988, Yankee Dawg You Die has long been an indictment of the stereotypes and limitations imposed by the entertainment industry on actors of color. This play ignites crucial conversations about representation, identity, and the resilience of Asian American artists–how far we’ve come in the last 60 years and how much further there is to go.
“Doing YANKEE DAWG YOU DIE at East West Players is a homecoming. EWP is where I developed the material for the play. Actors I met, actors I worked with, actors who became good friends. They and their hearts are all in there. The Bradleys, now Vincents. The Vincents, now mostly angels. All alive, living memories.”
Philip Kan Gotanda is the author of one of the largest collections of Asian American-themed work and is a seminal figure in the field of Asian American drama. This will be East West Players’ second time mounting Yankee Dawg You Die, which was first presented in 2001. Gotanda’s other East West Players credits include The Avocado Kid, or Zen and the Art Of Guacamole (1979), The Dream of Kitamura (1983), A Song For A Nisei Fisherman (1984), Fish Head Soup (1993), in the dominion of night (1995), The Wash (2001), Sisters Matsumoto (2002), The Wind Cries Mary (2004), and Yohen, co-produced with the Robey Theatre Company in both 1999 and 2018.
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