Edinburgh Fringe in yellow face row as play branded ‘publicly licensed racism’
msn.comThe Edinburgh Fringe is facing calls to introduce “guidelines” for next year’s festival after a yellow face row in which Asians claimed to have been subjected to “publicly licensed racism on stage”.
The campaign group British East and South East Asians working in the Theatre and Screen industry (BEATS) took issue with Tea Ceremony, a play in which a white male actor, Marios Ioannou, appears as a geisha, a Japanese hostess trained to entertain men.
The group claimed that the show, which sees Ioannou wear white face paint, deployed “unashamed yellow face” which it described as “extremely triggering and traumatic” to those who “bear historical weight” of historical abuses.
BEATS said that while “no one wants rules” at the Fringe, “surely there can be guidelines” to prevent what “we can only describe as publicly licensed racism on stage. ”However, the show’s producer has rejected any accusations of racism in the show and Ioannou, a Cypriot performer, also insisted the claims were unfair. “I am in contact with the Japanese people who worked on this performance, because they did work on it and they didn’t believe it was inappropriate,” he said. “We are working on an answer from all of us. “It is a very big discussion about cultural appropriation in art, and we are happy to open up a dialogue.
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