There are few productions that grab you by the collar and pull you headfirst into their truth. Scenes from a Yellow Peril, now playing at QPAC’s Cremorne Theatre, is one of them – a visceral, poetic and emotionally explosive reckoning with the weight of racialised identity in so-called Australia. Under the direction of Chelsea August and Egan Sun-Bin, Nathan Joe’s work doesn’t just ask questions, it interrogates them with raw urgency, daring its audience to look directly at what many would prefer to ignore.
Featuring four remarkable performers: Daphne Chen, Chris Nguyen, Peter Wood, and Jazz Zhao, Scenes from a Yellow Peril is part spoken-word confessional, part theatrical confrontation, and wholly human. Each performer offers more than just lines or monologues; they offer pieces of themselves.
Vulnerability is worn like armour here, completely and unashamedly. Whether recounting memories of childhood microaggressions, generational trauma, or the exhausting dance of assimilation, their honesty is searing. These aren’t just performances. They are testimonies.
From the outset, the show declares its intentions boldly: to drag uncomfortable truths into the light and force a reckoning with the casual, embedded racism often swept under the cultural rug. There are moments that feel like punches to the gut; not because they’re gratuitous, but because they are true.
When Chen describes the pressure to ‘be grateful’ while being quietly othered, or when Nguyen shares the ache of wanting to see himself in mainstream narratives, it’s impossible not to feel the weight of that dissonance. Zhao and Wood round out the quartet with aching sincerity, reflecting the spectrum of Asian-Australian experience, its contradictions, frustrations, and quiet victories.
The genius of Scenes from a Yellow Peril lies in its ability to shift tones without losing momentum. It’s as funny as it is furious, as lyrical as it is confrontational. The script swings from biting satire to heart-wrenching reflection with finesse, balancing political commentary with deeply personal truth. Racist stereotypes, ranging from the ‘model minority’ to the mathematically elite, to the more adult-only perceptions, are laid bare and dissected not just with intellectual rigour, but with emotional clarity. The show doesn’t seek pity. It demands empathy.
Emma Kate Burchell’s sound design is integral to this journey. More than an underscore, her compositions act like a pulse; subtle and supportive in quiet moments, then rising with a roar to meet the performers’ crescendos of rage or grief. Whether it’s the throbbing bass beneath a monologue on identity crisis or the eerie silence that falls after a moment of shared trauma, Burchell’s work amplifies the emotion without ever overpowering it. The sound doesn’t just accompany the story; it speaks with it, shaping the emotional terrain of the piece.
Staging is minimal, but intentional. There are no distractions – just four bodies, four voices, and the truths they’re brave enough to share. That simplicity allows the audience to focus on what really matters: the stories. The theatre becomes a kind of sacred space, one where immigrant experiences are not translated or diluted for comfort, but instead held up in their full complexity and power.
Scenes from a Yellow Peril is not comfortable theatre. Nor should it be. It’s theatre that confronts. Theatre that bleeds. Theatre that insists you look at it and sit with it. In a country that still wrestles with its colonial legacy and ongoing systemic inequality, Scenes From A Yellow Peril is both a protest and a balm. A place for reflection, connection, and, perhaps, the start of meaningful change. This is what theatre should be: a mirror, a megaphone, a movement.
Go and see it. Let it shake you. Let it teach you. Let it stay with you.
Scenes From A Yellow Peril runs to 12 July 2025 at the Cremorne Theatre, QPAC.
Tickets: https://qpac.com.au/whats-on/2025/scenes-from-a-yellow-peril
Website: https://www.thereactiontheory.net/
Socials: https://www.instagram.com/thereactiontheory/
Hero image photo credit: Cecilia Martin
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