Trilogy of Chinese America Hwang's early plays concerned the role of the
Chinese American and
Asian American in the contemporary world. His first play,
FOB, explores the contrasts and conflicts between established Asian Americans and "
Fresh Off the Boat" new immigrants. The play was developed by the National Playwrights Conference at the
Eugene O'Neill Theater Center and premiered in 1980
Off-Broadway at the
Joseph Papp Public Theater. In 1981 it won an
Obie Award for Best New American Play. Papp produced four more of Hwang's plays, including two in 1981:
The Dance and the Railroad, which tells the story of a former
Chinese opera star working as a
coolie laborer in the 19th-century American West, and
Family Devotions, a darkly comic take on the effects of Western religion on a Chinese-American family. This was nominated for the
Drama Desk Award. Those three plays added up to what the author described as a "Trilogy of Chinese America."
Branching out / national success After this, Papp also produced the show
Sound and Beauty, the omnibus title to two Hwang one-act plays set in
Japan. At this time, Hwang started to work on projects for the small screen. A television movie,
Blind Alleys, written by Hwang and Frederic Kimball and starring
Pat Morita and
Cloris Leachman, was produced in 1985 and followed a television version of
The Dance and the Railroad. Hwang's best-known play was
M. Butterfly, which premiered on
Broadway in 1988. The play is a deconstruction of
Giacomo Puccini's opera
Madama Butterfly, alluding to news reports of the 20th-century relationship between French diplomat
Bernard Boursicot and
Shi Pei Pu, a male Chinese opera singer. Shi purportedly convinced Boursicot that he was a woman throughout their twenty-year relationship. The play won numerous awards for Best Play: a
Tony Award (which Hwang was the first Asian American to win), the
Drama Desk Award, the John Gassner Award, and the
Outer Critics Circle Award. It was the first of three of his works to become a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
Work post-Butterfly The success of
M. Butterfly prompted Hwang's interests in many other different directions, including work for
opera,
film, and the
musical theatre. Hwang became a frequent collaborator as a librettist with the world-renowned composer
Philip Glass. One of
M. Butterfly's Broadway producers,
David Geffen, oversaw a
film version of the play, which was directed by
David Cronenberg. Hwang also wrote an original script,
Golden Gate, which was produced by
American Playhouse. Hwang wrote an early draft of a screenplay based upon
A. S. Byatt's
Booker Prize-winning novel
Possession, which was originally scheduled to be directed by
Sydney Pollack. Years later, director/playwright
Neil LaBute and
Laura Jones would collaborate on the script for a
2002 film. Throughout the 1990s, Hwang continued to write for the stage, including short plays for the famed
Humana Festival at the
Actors Theatre of Louisville. His full-length
Golden Child, received its world premiere at
South Coast Repertory in 1996.
Golden Child was later produced in New York City. It won a 1997
Obie Award for playwriting for Hwang's 1996 off-Broadway production. In 1998 it was produced on Broadway, and was nominated that year for a Tony Award for Best Play.
Return to Broadway In the new millennium, Hwang was asked by director
Robert Falls to help co-write the book for the musical
Aida (based upon the opera by
Giuseppe Verdi). In an earlier version, it had failed in regional theatre tryouts. Hwang and Falls re-wrote a significant portion of the book (by
Linda Woolverton).
Aida (with music and lyrics by
Elton John and
Tim Rice) opened in 2000 and proved highly profitable. His next project was a radical revision of
Richard Rodgers,
Oscar Hammerstein, II, and
Joseph Fields' musical
Flower Drum Song. The musical, which had been adapted from the novel
The Flower Drum Song by
C. Y. Lee, tells a story of the culture clash encountered by a Chinese family living in
San Francisco. Although the original Broadway production had a successful run from Dec 1, 1958 to May 7, 1960, and a Hollywood film version was released in 1961, some felt the musical had become dated. The Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization allowed Hwang to significantly rework the plot even as he retained character names and songs. While his 2002 revision won him his third Tony nomination, the show, directed by Robert Longbottom, received mixed reviews and ran for only 169 performances and 25 previews on Broadway. It later toured nationally. In
Yellow Face, Hwang wrote a semi-autobiographical play, featuring him as the main character in a media farce about mistaken racial identity. This had been also an important element in
Face Value. Hwang also wrote a new short play,
The Great Helmsman for the Papp's night of plays:
Ten.
Opera Hwang has continued to work steadily in the world of opera and musical theatre, and has written for children's theatre as well. Hwang co-wrote the English-language libretto for an operatic adaptation of
Lewis Carroll's
Alice in Wonderland with music (and part of the libretto) by the Korean composer
Unsuk Chin. It received its world premiere at the
Bavarian State Opera in 2007 and was released on DVD in 2008. Hwang wrote the
libretto to
Howard Shore's
opera The Fly, based on
David Cronenberg's 1986 film
of the same name. The opera premiered on July 2, 2008, at the
Théâtre du Châtelet in
Paris, France, with Cronenberg as director and
Plácido Domingo conducting. Hwang wrote the libretto for
Tarzan, a musical based on a film by Walt Disney Pictures, which was produced on Broadway. Hwang also collaborated on the multi-media event
Icarus at the Edge of Time, adapted from
Brian Greene's
novel of the same name. It featured music by
Philip Glass and a film by "Al and Al." The piece premiered as part of the
World Science Festival. After its major success at Chicago's Goodman Theatre, Hwang's play,
Chinglish, quickly made its way to Broadway in October 2011. It won the
Joseph Jefferson Award.
Chinglish was largely inspired by Hwang's frequent visits to China and his observations of interactions between Chinese and American people. Ticket sales of
Chinglish were conservative. Hwang's short play
A Very DNA Reunion was written for the evening of plays
The DNA Trail, which was conceived by Jamil Khoury and premiered at the historic
Chicago Temple Building. discussing
Allegiance musical at
Columbia University in late 2015
Since 2010 Hwang worked on a theatrical commission for the
Oregon Shakespeare Festival and
Arena Stage in Washington, DC. This was a musical version of
Aimee Mann's album
The Forgotten Arm, with Mann and Paul Bryant. He also worked on screenplays for
DreamWorks Animation and directors
Justin Lin and
Jonathan Caouette. In 2013, a production of
Yellow Face premiered on
YouTube. It was directed and adapted by
Jeff Liu, and featured
Sab Shimono among other actors. In 2014 two new Hwang plays were premiered. The first,
Kung Fu, about the life of
Bruce Lee, premiered as part of his residency at the
Signature Theatre Off-Broadway. The play opened February 24, 2014 in a production directed by Leigh Silverman, and featuring Cole Horibe, who had gained fame in the TV series,
So You Think You Can Dance. The second was
Cain and Abel, one of many plays included in
The Mysteries, a re-telling of Bible stories. Conceived by Ed Sylvanus Iskander,
The Mysteries also featured the work of playwrights
Craig Lucas,
Dael Orlandersmith,
Jose Rivera, and
Jeff Whitty. In 2014, Hwang joined the Playwriting Faculty of the
Columbia University School of the Arts Theatre Program. He was appointed the director of the Playwriting Concentration and will serve as an Associate Professor of Theatre in Playwriting.
Hilton Als of the
New Yorker has described him as "the most successful Chinese American playwright this country has produced." In 2016, Hwang became a writer and consulting producer of the
Golden Globe-winning television series
The Affair and in 1993 wrote a song "Solo" in association with
Prince. In the fall of 2016, the San Francisco Opera premiered
Dream of the Red Chamber, an opera by Hwang and Bright Sheng, based on the eighteenth-century Chinese novel of the same name. In the summer of 2016, Hwang became the chair of the board of the
American Theatre Wing. In the Spring of 2018, Hwang's
Soft Power premiered at the
Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles, California. The music and additional lyrics are by
Jeanine Tesori. Its cast is largely Asian. It transferred to Off-Broadway at the Public Theater in September 2019 (previews). In May 2020, it was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, making Hwang the first person to be a three-time finalist without winning. ==Works==