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‘I felt sick’: Opera Australia under fire for using ‘yellowface’
No government-funded Australian arts organisation would put a white performer on stage with their face painted black in 2022 without expecting to spark an uproar.
- Matthew Knott
- WAtoday
So Cat-Thao Nguyen wants to know why no one at Opera Australia seems to have questioned whether it is appropriate to dress white performers up in traditional Chinese make-up and exaggerated Fu Manchu-style moustaches to play characters named Ping, Pang and Pong in one of their marquee productions.
Ms Nguyen, a Vietnamese-Australian writer and lawyer, said she and her Chinese-Canadian husband were shocked by what they…