| Throughout
his career, playwright David Henry Hwang has explored the complexities
of forging Eastern and Western cultures in a contemporary America. His extraordinary body of work, over the past 20 years, has
been marked by a deep desire to reaffirm the common humanity
in all of us. He is best known as the author of M.
Butterfly, which won the 1988 Tony, Drama Desk, John Gassner,
and Outer Critics Circle Awards, and was also a finalist for
the 1989 Pulitzer Prize. His play Golden
Child premiered Off-Broadway at the Joseph Papp Public Theater,
received a 1997 Obie Award for playwriting and subsequently
moved to Broadway, where it received three 1998 Tony Nominations,
including Best New Play. His newest play, Yellow Face,
which premiered at Los Angeles’ Mark Taper Forum and New
York's Public Theater, was a finalist for the 2008 Pulitzer
Prize.
Mr. Hwang's Broadway musicals
include his new book for Rodgers & Hammerstein's Flower
Drum Song, which earned him his third Tony nomination in
2003 for Best Book of a Musical. He co-wrote the book for Disney's
international hit AIDA, with music and lyrics by Elton John
and Tim Rice, which won four 2000 Tony Awards, and was the bookwriter
of Disney's Tarzan, with songs by Phil Collins.
Mr. Hwang's other plays
include FOB (1981 Obie Award), The Dance & the
Railroad (1982 Drama Desk Nomination), Family Devotions
(1982 Drama Desk Nomination), The House of Sleeping Beauties
(1983), The Sound of a Voice (1983), Bondage (1992),
Face Value (1993), and Trying
to Find Chinatown (1996). He adapted Henrik Ibsen's Peer
Gynt with Swiss director Stephan Müller for Trinity
Repertory Company (1998), and Peter Sis' Tibet Through the
Red Box for the Seattle Childrens Theatre (2004). His plays
are published by Plume, Theatre Communications Group, Dramatists
Play Service, and Playscripts.com.
As an opera librettist,
he has written three works with composer Philip Glass: 1000
Airplanes on the Roof (1988), The Voyage, which premiered
at the Metropolitan Opera in 1992, and The Sound of a Voice
at American Repertory Theatre in 2003. The Silver River,
with music by Bright Sheng, was produced at the 2000 Spoleto
Festival USA and the 2002 Lincoln Center Festival. Ainadamar,
with music by Osvaldo Golijov, premiered at the Santa Fe Opera
and Lincoln Center in 2006; the Deutsche Gramofone recording
won two 2007 Grammy Awards, for Best Opera Recording and Best
Classical Composition. Alice in Wonderland, with music
by Unsuk Chin, premiered at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich
and was named 2007 “World Premiere of the Year”
by Opernwelt Magazine. Mr. Hwang co-wrote the song “Solo,”
released on the 1994 gold album Come by composer/performer
Prince. He made his acting debut in the 2001 digital short “Asian
Pride Porn,” directed by Greg Pak.
Mr. Hwang penned the screenplays
for M.
Butterfly (1993), directed by David Cronenberg; Golden
Gate (1994), directed by John Madden; and Possession
(co-writer, 2002), directed by Neil LaBute.
Upcoming productions
include The Fly, an opera based on David Cronenberg's
movie with music by Howard Shore, for Paris' Theatre du Chatelet
and the Los Angeles Opera; Bruce Lee: Journey to the West,
a musical with composer David Yazbek, to be directed by Bartlett
Sher; and Daughter of Shanghai, starring actress Tsai
Chin and based on her memoir, to be directed by Taiwanese director
Stan Lai.
David Henry Hwang has
been awarded numerous grants, including fellowships from the
National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim and Rockefeller
Foundations, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the PEW
Charitable Trust. In 1998, the nation's oldest Asian American
theatre company, East West Players, christened its new mainstage
The David Henry Hwang Theatre. From 1994-2001, Mr. Hwang served
by appointment of President Clinton on the President's Committee
on the Arts and the Humanities.
David Henry Hwang attended
Stanford University and the Yale School of Drama, and holds
honorary degrees from Columbia College and The American Conservatory
Theatre. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife, actress
Kathryn Layng, and their two children.
•••
“David Henry Hwang
is a true original. A native of Los Angeles, born to immigrant
parents, he has one foot on each side of the cultural divide.
He knows America— its vernacular, its social landscape,
its theatrical traditions. He knows the same about China. In
his plays, he manages to mix both of these conflicting cultures
until he arrives at a style that is wholly his own. Mr. Hwang's
works have the verve of the well-made American stage comedies
and yet, with little warning, they bubble over into the mystical
rituals of Asian stagecraft. By at once bringing West and East
into conflict and unity, this playwright has found the perfect
way to dramatize both the pain and humor of the immigrant experience.”
— Frank Rich, New
York Times
“Hwang has the potential
to become the first important dramatist of American public life
since Arthur Miller, and maybe the best of them all.”
-William A. Henry III, Time
“David Henry Hwang
is one of the most intelligent and original voices in the American
theatre.”
— Detroit News |
