Chinese Republicans – 24 February 2026

Chinese Republicans follows four Chinese women who work at a law firm and are members of a relatively new affinity group that meets regularly to discuss their jobs and mentor new Chinese American women in their workplace. They are on a spectrum of how they feel about being Chinese in America and who is “really” Chinese. It all comes to a head when their youngest member is disappointed about not getting a promotion and generalizes her anger toward all injustice in the workplace. In the panic to control the damage done by this individual so that it doesn’t reflect poorly on the entire affinity group, members abandon each other and their collective struggle as they feel an urgency to fight for their individual jobs. Witty, fast paced, and delightfully humorous, Chinese Republicans delivers high quality entertainment that also contains pearls of wisdom and a lot to think about.

Though their company, Friedman Wallace may see these women as all the same, all Chinese American, that’s not how they see each other. Iris (Jully Lee) is from Beijing and working in the US on a Visa that she hopes is that start of a path to citizenship. She speaks accented English and many dialects of Mandarin.  Phyllis (Jodi Long) is American born. She is the trail blazer at Friedman Wallace and has fully bought into the importance of the American economy. Ellen (Jennifer Ikeda) is American born into poverty. She is a determined hard worker who will do whatever it takes to come out on top. Her family spoke Cantonese, but she does not speak Chinese at all. Katie (Anna Zavelson) is an American born protégé who is learning Mandarin in the hopes of getting a big promotion that would have been impossible for any of the women who came before her. They each see themselves as cutthroat Chinese women, but they pass judgment on each other, which is characteristic of any workplace. In the show, these judgments turn into a desire to protect themselves as individuals over the greater good, cementing the frequently mentioned tidbit that these women are Republicans. In the end, they value nothing above their own job trajectories. They do not want favors from each other or help climbing the ladder to their particular glass ceiling. They want to do it all on their own, and they don’t care if others get harmed by the same people who harmed them.

Playwright Alex Lin fully fleshes out these characters—they do not remain stereotypes for long. Each is lovable in her own way, strong in her own way, successful in her own way—yet they are proud in the same way. This affinity group is proud of the ways in which they each as individuals accomplish things each other has not. Though they ride each other’s coattails, they are not grateful to each other for the paths that have been paved; they are significantly more determined to pave their own. Each woman thinks that what she has invested—in each case, everything—is unique and makes her rise to success the most unlikely and therefore the biggest success story. They want to live with honor and dignity and passion, but each strives to be superior when they could instead strive to be equally respected.

The experience of watching Chinese Republicans is so enjoyable because it’s built on these women that we come to love and understand as distinct representations of what it means to be Chinese, female, and Republican. At the end, the women part ways on their own terms, except, perhaps, for Iris, whose ending is unclear. Not only do they part ways with each other, three of the four part ways with Friedman Wallace. The chaos surrounding this affinity group asks an urgent question: why do we keep trying to put people in categories, how do we use those categories, and who benefits from affirming the labels? In this case, the somewhat liberal idea of an affinity group fails because, except for certain brief moments, these women don’t feel an affinity with each other. They feel deeply divided by their differences. The way this story plays out on stage is striking and powerful, positing that no matter what common labels/identities people share, at the end of the day, when threatened, we all choose to look out for ourselves first. It is a way that transcends cultures—it is deeply human to do whatever it takes to survive to tell our own stories.

Chinese Republicans does it all— leading with laughter and pushing boundaries with both kindness and dignity. The play serves as a great reminder that, whatever other affiliations we might have, we are all people first: even when that means being deeply flawed.

I attended this performance on a press pass from Polk & Co.