|
Results for David Henry Hwang
|
On this page:
|
Hwang, David Henry (b. 1957), playwright. America's preeminent Asian‐American playwright was born in Los Angeles, the son of Chinese immigrants, and attended Stanford and Yale before settling in New York, where his early work FOB (1980), about a shy “fresh off the boat” Chinese man, was produced at the
| 1980 | FOB. Hwang's Obie Award-winning first play, the title of which stands for "fresh off the boat," is about a young Chinese immigrant's encounter with two Chinese American students; together they explore the cost of assimilation. Hwang is the son of Chinese immigrants who was educated at Stanford and Yale Drama School. |
| 1981 | The Dance and the Railroad and Family Devotions. The first of Hwang's 1981 dramas focuses on Chinese workmen on the transcontinental railroad during a 1867 strike; the second examines the destructive influence of Christianity on Asian cultural traditions from the vantage point of a well-to-do Chinese American family. |
| 1988 | M. Butterfly. A French diplomat ruins his career because of his obsession with the actress Song Liling, who plays the part of Cio-Cio-San in Puccini's opera Madama Butterfly. She is his "feminine ideal." In fact, Song is a male and a spy. Hwang deftly explores the ambiguity of gender roles to reveal the unsatisfactory boundaries of societal conventions. It is the first play by an Asian American to win a Tony Award. |
| 1996 | Golden Child. Hwang's play about the viability and power of Asian cultural traditions shows a Chinese American about to become a father. He is visited by the ghost of his grandmother, who urges him to honor his ancestors and origins. The play would reach Broadway in 1998, receiving nominations for the Tony Award and the Outer Critics Circle Award. |
| David Henry Hwang | |
|---|---|
| Birth name | David Henry Hwang |
| Born | August 11 1957 |
| Origin | Los Angeles, California |
| Occupation(s) | Playwright, Screenwriter, Television Writer, Librettist, Lyricist |
| Years active | 1980-present |
David Henry Hwang (born August 11, 1957) is a contemporary American playwright who has risen to prominence as the preeminent Asian American dramatist in the U.S.
He was born in Los Angeles, California and was educated at Stanford University and the Yale School of Drama. His first play was produced at the Okada House dormitory at Stanford and he briefly studied playwriting with Sam Shepard and María Irene Fornés.
Many of his plays concern the role of the Chinese American and Asian American in the modern day world. His first play, the Obie Award-winning FOB, depicts the contrasts and conflicts between established Asian Americans and "Fresh Off the Boat" newcomer immigrants. The play was developed by the National Playwrights Conference at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center and premiered in 1980 Off-Broadway at Joseph Papp's Public Theater. Papp went on to produce four more of Hwang's plays, including the Pulitzer Prize-nominated drama The Dance and the Railroad, which tells the story of a former Chinese opera star working as a coolie laborer in the nineteenth century and Family Devotions, a darkly comic take on the effects of Western religion on a Chinese family.
After this, Papp also produced the show Sound and Beauty, the omnibus title to two Hwang one-act plays set in Japan. His next play, Rich Relations, was his first to feature non-Asian characters. It premiered at the Second Stage Theatre in New York and, though not a success, did prepare him for his work on his most well-known play — some consider it his masterpiece — M. Butterfly, for which he won a Tony Award, the Drama Desk Award, the John Gassner Award, and the Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Play. It was also his second play to be a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The play is a clever and brilliant deconstruction of Giacomo Puccini's opera Madama Butterfly. The play is also loosely based on news reports of the relationship between a French diplomat, Bernard Boursicot, and Shi Pei Pu, a male Chinese opera singer who purportedly convinced Boursicot that he was a woman throughout their twenty-year relationship. The play premiered on Broadway in 1988 and made Hwang the first Asian American to win the Tony Award for Best Play.
The success of M. Butterfly prompted Hwang's interests in many different directions, including work for opera, film, television, and the musical theatre. Throughout the 1990s, he continued to write for the stage, including short plays for the famed Humana Festival at the Actors Theatre of Louisville and Golden Child, which received its world premiere at South Coast Repertory in 1996. Golden Child later became his second Broadway venture and won the 1997 Obie Award for its Off-Broadway production and gave Hwang his second Tony nomination.
In the new millennium, he has continued to work solidly in all areas of dramatic writing. His third Broadway success was a radical revision of Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein, II, and Joseph Fields' musical Flower Drum Song. Although extremely successful when introduced in the 1950s and early 1960s, it had become dated after the Civil Rights Movement redefined the viability of stereotypical portrayals of Asian American communities. Though it fell from favor relative to other Rodgers and Hammerstein productions such as South Pacific, it inspired another generation of Asians such as Hwang to re-imagine the musical. Adapted from the novel The Flower Drum Song by C. Y. Lee, it tells the story of a culture clash with a Chinese family living in San Francisco. The Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization allowed Hwang to significantly rework the plot, while retaining character names and songs. His version — both an homage to the original and a modern re-thinking — won him his third Tony nomination. Though Flower Drum Song is often called the first musical with an all-Asian cast, it was the 2002 revival of the play which was finally produced with an all-Asian cast of actor-singers. The original production had cast many non-Asians in leading roles, including Caucasians and even an African-American (Juanita Hall) to play Chinese characters. Though some were disappointed it was not as big of a hit as the original, it went on to a national tour.
Hwang's new full-length play Yellow Face, which centers on his one failed Broadway experiment Face Value, premiered in Los Angeles in 2007 at the Mark Taper Forum, as a co-production with East West Players, and is having its Off-Broadway premiere this November at Joseph Papp's Public Theater. He also penned the English language libretto for an operatic adaptation of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland with music by the Korean composer Unsuk Chin, which received its world premiere at the Bavarian State Opera in 2007.
Hwang's work for the stage includes FOB, The Dance and the Railroad, Family Devotions, The House of Sleeping Beauties (adapted from Yasunari Kawabata's novella House of the Sleeping Beauties), The Sound of a Voice, As the Crow Flies, Rich Relations, M. Butterfly, Bondage, Face Value, Trying to Find Chinatown, Bang Kok, Golden Child, an adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's Peer Gynt (co-written with Stephan Muller), Jade Flowerpots and Bound Feet, and the children's play Tibet Through the Red Box (based upon Peter Sis' book).
His music-theatre work includes the texts for Philip Glass' 1000 Airplanes on the Roof, The Voyage, and The Sound of a Voice, the book for Elton John and Tim Rice's Aida (co-written by Linda Woolverton and Robert Falls), the Walt Disney Company's theatrical version of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan, the libretti for The Silver River with music by Bright Sheng and Ainadamar with composer Osvaldo Golijov, as well as Rodgers and Hammerstein's Flower Drum Song.
He has also written a number of screenplays, including David Cronenberg's adaptation of M. Butterfly, John Madden's Golden Gate, and Neil LaBute's Possession (co-written with Laura Jones and LaBute, adapted from the novel by A. S. Byatt). He also wrote the teleplay for the NBC mini-series The Lost Empire, directed by Peter MacDonald. He served as a script advisor for the film Picture Bride. In 2003, Susan Hoffman directed a film adaptation of The Sound of a Voice entitled Sound of a Voice, written by and starring Lane Nishikawa and Natsuko Ohama.
As another extension of his interests, he penned the texts for three dance pieces: Ruby Shang's Yellow Punk Dolls and Dances in Exile as well as Maureen Fleming's After Eros (with music by Philip Glass). He also co-wrote the Prince song "Solo" for his album Come.
In 1999, Hwang starred in a short film by Greg Pak called Asian Pride Porn, which combined humor and serious social commentary to parody the Asian fetish and the prevalence of Asian fetish pornography. As himself, he has appeared in the documentary films Hollywood Chinese, Happy Birthday Oscar Wilde, and Literary Visions.
He has been awarded numerous grants, including fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the Pew Charitable Trusts. He has been honored with awards from the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund , the Association for Asian Pacific American Artists, the Museum of Chinese in the Americas, the East West Players, the Organization of Chinese Americans, the Media Action Network for Asian Americans, the Center for Migration Studies, the Asian American Resource Workshop, the China Institute, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. In 1998, the nation's oldest Asian American theatre company, the East West Players, christened its new mainstage The David Henry Hwang Theatre.
Mr. Hwang sits on the boards of the Dramatists Guild, Young Playwrights Inc., and the Museum of Chinese in the Americas. He conducts interviews on arts-related topics for the national PBS cable television show Asian America. From 1994-2001, he served by appointment of President Bill Clinton on the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities.
David Henry Hwang holds honorary degrees from Columbia College in Chicago and The American Conservatory Theatre. He lives in New York City with his wife, actress Kathryn Layng, and their children, Noah David and Eva Veanne.
| The Plays of David Henry Hwang |
|---|
This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
Join the WikiAnswers Q&A community. Post a question or answer questions about "David Henry Hwang" at WikiAnswers.
Copyrights:
 |
 | American Theater Guide. The Oxford Companion to American Theatre. Copyright © 2004 by Oxford University Press, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more |
 |
| Works. The Chronology of American Literature, edited by Daniel S. Burt. Copyright © 2004 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Read more |
 |
| Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "David Henry Hwang". Read more |
Search for answers directly from your browser with the FREE Answers.com Toolbar!
Click here to download now. 
Get Answers your way! Check out all our free tools and products.
Mentioned In:
