When Congress erupted into battles over National Endowment for the Arts funding a few years ago, playwright Chay Yew launched his own response to what he viewed as censorship by conservatives trying to block grants for controversial works.

Yew wanted to show that politics may shift with the times, but art always survives.

“Empires rise and fall,” Yew says. “But what endures is left on the walls of museums.”

Searching for a story to express this theme, he turned to actress Tsai Chin, who suggested he write about the tragic fate of many Chinese artists during the Cultural Revolution. Chin’s father, a star of the Beijing Opera, and her mother were both killed when Mao Tse-tung’s Red Guard tried to stamp out China’s traditional culture.

Yew’s research unearthed frightening lessons about artistic censorship—lessons that he said Americans should not take lightly.

“I realized this relationship and dance between art and politics always involves suspicion on both sides,” he said. “The most shocking thing about the Cultural Revolution is that it took only three years to do it. The lesson is how quickly things happen once fanatics take hold ...

“This is a country based on freedom of speech—it’s the First amendment,” he continued. “Once you lose that, then everything else can fall.”

Red features Jamie Guan, a former Chinese opera star who witnessed firsthand the turbulence of the Cultural Revolution. Guan performed with Beijing Opera Troupe No. 1—China’s highest ranking Beijing opera ensemble—before, during and after the revolution. Guan, who now lives in the United States, choreographed Red and plays supporting roles in as an opera performer and a Red Guard.

In China, Guan survived the revolution by agreeing to perform in the new Revolutionary Opera, which substituted somber plays with Communist themes for love stories with flamboyant costumes. He recalls the period as a tragic time for many performers: “Many artists died or were sent to the countryside to become farmers,” he said.

Red follows the story of a Chinese American author Sonja Wong Pickfordreturn to China during the Cultural Revolution. She seeks out Beijing Opera star Hua Wai Mun (Ric Young), hoping to write his biography, and confronts her own past in the process. Though Pickford and Hua’s names are fictional, the story is based on the real lives of two opera stars, Mei Lan Fong and Zhen Shin Fong, both killed during the Cultural Revolution.

Pickford (Jodi Long) is a successful novelist who pens titles like Love in the Jade Pagoda and Bound Feet, Bound Lives that shamelessly dole out hefty doses of Eastern exoticism to a hungry American audience.

“She’s a character with balls,” says Yew. “She feels that what she is doing is fine. Her philosophy is: ‘I give people what they want—that’s the only way for them to ever learn anything about history.’ She’s a survivor. It’s an immigrant experience.”

Himself an immigrant, Yew, 33, moved to Los Angeles from Singapore with his parents when he was 12. He remembers as a child going with his grandmother to watch Chinese opera performed in the streets in his homeland.

“They would just erect a stage in the middle of the street and all the kids would gather around,” he recalled. “You could interact with the performers. It was all colorful and exciting. It really inspired me. It said to me that you could create magic from a bare stage.”

Red is the first historical play written by Yew, but not his first critique of communism and oppression. His play The Courage To Stand Alone is based on letters written by the Chinese dissident Wei Jingsheng.

Yew has also had his own encounters with censorship. During the early 1980s, one of his plays, As If He Hears, was banned in Singapore because it referred to homosexuality and AIDS. Eventually, the government relented, allowing the play to be produced in 1989. Two other plays, Half Lives and A Language of Their Own, stirred up controversy six years later in the United States when an East-West Players board member resigned in protest over the frank gay themes.

Yew feels that it’s vital for Asian Americans and Asian American businesses to support the arts.

“Our stories must be told, otherwise our children will grow up with only the stories of the majority—and that’s not our experience,” Yew says. “Asian Americans must take the first steps. If we don’t take them, no one else will.”

Red runs through April 26 at the Manhattan Theater Club Stage II, City Center, 131 W. 55th St., New York City. Performances Tuesday-Saturday, 7:30 p.m., with Saturday and Sunday matinees at 3 p.m. Tickets are $36. For more information, call 212-581-1212.