D.W. Griffith stoked racism with ‘Birth of a Country.’ A playwright imagines what occurred future

Following the deeply divisive reception of “The Birth of a Country,” director D.W. Griffith introduced “Broken Blossoms,” in which a young, abused lady finds comfort and ease in the enterprise of a type Chinese person. The 1919 silent movie, dependent on Thomas Burke’s limited story “The Chink and the Child” and also regarded as “The Yellow Guy and the Lady,” was not only a box workplace strike but also a notably compassionate depiction of a Chinese character, as it was launched amid antimiscegenation legal guidelines and during the “Yellow Peril” period of widespread anti-Chinese sentiment all over the U.S.

“Griffith chose a tragic tale of unattainable appreciate, really like difficult in this earth of passions and prejudices and brutal forces … and ‘Broken Blossoms’ came to the display, a masterpiece in relocating photos,” browse the New York Times’ critique. “But while the photoplay is distinctly Mr. Griffith’s achievement, it is not his on your own. A amount of unnamed individuals will have to have contributed to it, in addition to the cast.”

Much more than a century later, a new play puts that movie’s nameless individuals at middle stage. Titled “Unbroken Blossoms,” the East West Gamers world premiere applauds the two Chinese consultants hired to perform on Griffith’s interracial romance film though a white actor plays the movie’s Chinese immigrant character — total with a rubber band on his head to make his eyes look slanted onscreen.

“Even even though it was yellowface and, by today’s expectations, problematic, it was progressive at the time,” reported the play’s director, Jeff Liu. “But it is portion of our Hollywood record and I don’t assume we obtain just about anything by erasing that. We can find out from it, be in discussion with it and develop on it as we proceed to notify our personal tales with more agency.”

“Unbroken Blossoms” introduces James B. Leong, who went on to generate and immediate the motion picture “Lotus Blossom” and act in extra than 80 movies, and Moon Kwan, who afterwards directed extra than 50 films in China when distributing Chinese titles in America. Philip W. Chung, a playwright and the imaginative director for director Justin Lin’s enterprise YOMYOMF, began writing the piece a ten years in the past upon discovering of the consultants’ existence from the Chinese American movie heritage documentary “Hollywood Chinese.”

“I really like videos, and it was mind-blowing to me that there had been these people who looked like me in major roles in the sector back again then, since that is not a little something you discover when you are coming up and researching film,” he stated. “The most interesting issue to me is they each became filmmakers right after this movie. Just the thought that somebody at that time did that, when it is nonetheless tricky to even do that now, was so inspiring.”

The absence of historic document about Leong and Kwan’s contributions to “Broken Blossoms” was “freeing” for Chung, who fictionalized their personalities and perspectives of how successful a Hollywood cultural consultant can be: Onstage, Kwan, portrayed by Ron Song, is keen to support a white actor authentically symbolize the Chinese population in a silent movie, whilst Leong, performed by Gavin Kawin Lee, cynically phone calls their hires a studio publicity stunt.

The participate in also dramatizes the argument that Griffith manufactured “Broken Blossoms,” as effectively as “Intolerance,” in reaction to the backlash from “Birth of a Country,” which ignited the revival of the Ku Klux Klan. “He was blindsided by the accusations of racism and bigotry, and he then grew to become extremely defensive of his get the job done,” stated Chung, who investigated Griffith via books and museum archives. “These flicks felt like him answering his critics: ‘You think I’m racist? I’m gonna make these films that will clearly show you that I’m not.’”

Richard Barthelmess and Lillian Gish in the 1919 movie “Broken Blossoms.”

(United Archives by way of Getty Visuals)

In the course of the play, some moments depicting the earning of the motion picture are delivered with an absurd humor, given the casting of a white actor in a Chinese function and the hiring of two consultants for cultural authenticity. (Even now, Richard Barthelmess’ overall performance as Cheng Huan in the movie was thought of by critics to be the finest of his job.) Other folks are offered with a palpable horror, as Griffith famously taunted Lillian Gish to elicit her effectiveness in the film’s closet scene.

Staging these a scene, and undertaking it evening following night, “requires actors who would be keen to go there and not be scared of what was in heritage,” said Liu of Arye Gross, who portrays Griffith. “It’s all about permission and trust from all people in the display about why we’re telling this story — not just to make a portrait of a flawed human being but also to examine the white privilege factor of generating artwork in Hollywood.”

Although the the vast majority of the “Unbroken Blossoms” plot is historic fiction, Chung hopes the piece sends a authentic message exclusively to filmmakers and film fans of Asian descent, in particular individuals striving to even more enhance culturally genuine illustration onscreen.

“What I required to make obvious in the play is how much progress has been manufactured given that this motion picture, but also how much has not adjusted,” explained Chung. “But I also locate it somewhat inspiring that, in a way, this is a shared wrestle. It’s not just a thing that we’re likely via for the very first time now, and there’s a prolonged historical past that we’re linked to, even if it’s been mostly forgotten by the normal general public.

“But we have to discover that heritage in purchase to make on it and go forward.”

Gavin Kawin Lee, left, Ron Music and Arye Gross in “Unbroken Blossoms” at East West Gamers.

(Zev Rose Woolley)