The Asian man stands awestruck as a white man snags the lead role for “Miss Saigon.” Quite infuriated and embarrassed, he wonders how an Asian role could be assigned as such.

This scenario is precisely what will happen in David Henry Hwang’s upcoming play about ethnicity, “Yellow Face,” which will premiere in April 2007 at the Mark Taper Forum. Stanford students will get an early peek in February, however, as Hwang and his staff have been selected as the next invitees to the Stanford’s Public Theater Residency Program.

Hwang is the second artist to be selected for the residency since its debut in February 2006. Most notable for “M. Butterfly” — which earned him the title of the first Asian American to win the Tony award — Hwang is a Stanford alum and a rising giant in contemporary American theater.

The residency will host Hwang, Public Theater Artistic Director Oskar Eustis, and the rest of the crew on campus for approximately ten days, beginning February 8th. During his stay, Hwang will be involved both in coursework and extra-curricular activities, workshopping his play with students, joining student events and forums and holding a closing staged reading.

The program comes as part of several arts initiatives launched by the Stanford Institute for Creative Arts (SICA) and the Stanford Arts Initiative. Other programs, like the Institute for Diversity and the Arts, the visiting professorship of Stan Lai in the Drama Department and the Music Department’s Pan-Asian Music Festival, also fall under SICA’s umbrella.

The goal of all of these programs is to enhance the presence of art on campus and extend what President Hennessy calls an “arts way of thinking” to a broad range of concentrations.

“The goal is highlighting the sorts of virtues that we associate with the arts — emphasis on imagination, creativity, forms of self-expression and critical thinking — not only within arts, but in all other fields on campus,” said Bryan Wolf, the Jeanette and William Hayden Jones Professor in American Art and Culture and co-director of SICA and the Stanford Arts Initiative.

“By drawing from Stanford’s strengths in the arts, technology and science, our unique residential education program and our geopolitical location on the Pacific Rim will help us make the arts impact every aspect of student life,” added associate professor of music Jonathan Berger, fellow director of the two programs.

The residency’s unique partnership between Stanford and the Public Theater of New York is a win-win situation for both parties. While Stanford has insufficient funds and resources to become a world-class art institution on its own, it can now bring first-rate resources to its campus. For the Public Theater, having a West coast base increases their range of activity. The theater is particularly renowned for its Shakespeare in the Park series that it hosts in Central Park, New York.

“There are important overlaps in our missions between the drama department at Stanford and the Public Theater,” Wolf said. “One of them is a deep concern to present and promote contemporary American voices in theater.”

Indeed, Hwang is a leading contemporary artist, but Wolf also cites Hwang’s compatibility and potential for contribution to the Stanford community as the overriding criterion for making the choice.

“The play deals with questions of how we view race and ethnicity today in society and there are so many segments within Stanford that are interested in this question,” Wolf said. “Also, the play is about the business of how plays get mounted and produced. So in that way, we’re also speaking to the Graduate School of Business.”

Despite the broad applications of “Yellow Face,” a few students have expressed concern that the subject matter of being Asian American could be too narrow.

“I’m not Asian, so I don’t know how I could relate to what the play is talking about,” said a sophomore who wished to remain anonymous.

Professors and leaders involved with the project, however, expressed disdain at such thinking.

“The play uses the experience of Chinese Americans to open up discussion on cross-cultural experiences to people outside that group,” said Harry Elam, Drama Department chair and director of the Institute for Diversity and the Arts. “That’s too bad, that’s their loss,” he added, regarding about people who would not partake in the program because of its focus.

“Ethnicity isn’t confined to persons of color,” agreed Wolf. “I think the larger questions [Hwang] raises will address how we think about ethnicity, how it effects our daily decisions. These are questions everybody needs to address.”

In light of President Hennessy’s recent announcement of The Stanford Challenge and its emphasis on the creative arts, the residency is not only timely but a necessary step in improving the quality of university education.

“Education from now will go beyond learning formulas; it will be about thinking out of the box,” said Wolf. “It will be about finding new answers to old problems.”

To Wolf, the role of arts in this shift was undoubtedly clear.

“Art teaches not the answers, but how to think.”