INFO
| Name | Scenes from a Yellow Peril |
| Year | 2022 |
| Playwright | Nathan Joe |
| Type of Text | Play |
| Artform | Theatre |
ABOUT
Scenes From a Yellow Peril is a contemporary theatre piece written by Nathan Joe. Structured into 17 lyrical vignettes, the work challenges assimilation and microaggressions experienced by the East Asian diaspora in a settler colonial context. The piece mixes poetry, Q&AS, and live music to create a “swelling articulation of rage and accumulated resentments that answer back.”
Joe started writing the play in 2016, originally named WE ARE YELLOW PERIL, while “stuck in a job that [he] felt deep apathy for”. He said he wrote the play feeling “there was no well-made play that could reflect what [he] wanted to say. Because what [he] wanted to say was a messy lot of multitudes.” The following year, in 2018, the play was developed as part of Playmarket’s Asian Ink and then presented at Proudly Asian Theatre’s Fresh off the Page series.
After being shortlisted for Q MATCHBOX in August 2019, Joe applied for a CNZ Arts Grant to enable the presentation of the work, but did not receive funding. However, he then developed and presented the play as part of his residency at the New Zealand Young Writers Fest in Ōtepoti and performed selected excerpts at TEDx Auckland 2019.
In 2020, Joe put forward a second unsuccessful application for a CNZ Arts Grant. In March 2021, it was further developed and read at the Auckland Arts Festival. After a third application for a CNZ Arts Grant, the work was funded, leading to its world premiere by the Auckland Theatre Company in June 2022. Joe said that the delayed opportunities to present the work ultimately proved to be for the best:
These interruptions served as a prolonged development process where the work changed alongside me. One of the biggest changes was picking up a love for performance poetry which found its way into the text. Not to mention the accumulation of perspectives that the work passed through. Every step — from the first Proudly Asian Theatre play-reading to the eventual Auckland Theatre Company presentation — shaped the play.
In the published version of the play, Joe said that the first draft was unabashedly rageful and found joy in rage. However, he wrote: “that joy could not carry itself from 2018 all the way to 2022. On its way, new complicated feelings arose, including grief and hope.”
Joe said he spent his early career avoiding writing about being Asian, which “revealed how badly [he] needed to”. The show is “the result of all those feelings of internalised racism slowly being corrected [and] the result of finally being given permission to speak freely.”
In 2024, Scenes from a Yellow Peril was shown at Queensland Theatre under the direction of Chelsea August and Egan Sun-Bin. Sun-Bin said the show isn’t just about racism and that “it offers hope by asking the tough questions we’ve been silent on.”
Once the play proper starts, the momentum does not stop. Its mixture of rage, wit, sadness and self-deprecating humour generates an emotional whiplash that reflects the turmoil I often feel when navigating issues of race.
In 2025, the text was translated by Shiqi Ren, a Masters student of Intercultural Communication and Applied Translation at Te Herenga Waka with the intended purpose to be published, developed and performed. Ren chose this text because they were moved by its turbulence, ambivalence and resilience:
As a queer, first-generation Chinese immigrant with a background in Chinese literature and an ongoing focus on transcultural belonging, I felt compelled to engage more deeply with this work and facilitate its accessibility to wider audiences — those with varied linguistic profiles and diasporic experiences, whose perspectives on being “assimilated Asians” in Aotearoa would enrich the conversation the play inspire
LINKS
Key works / presentations
The Reaction Theory with BIPOC Arts Australia
Queensland Theatre
August 9-24, 2024
Auckland Theatre Company
ASB Waterfront Theatre, Tāmaki Makaurau
June 21– July 3, 2022
Key awards
2024 — Matilda Awards — Best Independent Production (The Reaction Theory with BIPOC Arts Australia)
2024 — Matilda Awards — Best Ensemble (The Reaction Theory with BIPOC Arts Australia)
