David Henry Hwang is an American playwright, librettist, screenwriter, and theater professor at Columbia University in New York City. His 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. 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. His next project was a radical revision of Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein, II, and Joseph Fields' musical Flower Drum Song. Other work he has done includes Trying to Find Chinatown, As the Crow Flies, Chinglish, The Dance and the Railroad, and the books for Aida and Tarzan.
David has written plays, musicals, television, opera and more. He’s terrific proof that if you’re a master story teller, you can adapt that skill to any medium (focus on the fundamentals, kids).
David shared what it takes to work in all those different mediums and a whole bunch of other stories about working in our biz like:
- What it was like to have his first play premiere at The Public.
- How the first time he heard M. Butterfly read out loud was at the first rehearsal for the Broadway production!
- What we can do better to encourage more diversity on and off our stages.
- Why there wasn’t an opening night party for M. Butterfly.
- How the development of new plays has changed . . . and whether that’s for the better.
Keep up with me: @KenDavenportBway