David Henry Hwang
Playwright, Screenwriter, & Librettist
M. Butterfly, and Chinglish
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 30 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. The play enjoyed a one-year run on London's West End and has been produced in over four dozen countries to date. 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 play, Yellow Face, which premiered at Los Angeles’ Mark Taper Forum and New York's Public Theater, won a 2008 Obie Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.
His most recent play Chinglish, a comedy about an American businessman in China, had a well-received premiere at Chicago's Goodman Theatre, and won a 2011 Jeff Award for Best New Work. It moved to Broadway, where it received a Drama Desk Nomination for Outstanding New Play, and was named Best New American Play of 2011 by TIME Magazine.
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 ran over four years on Broadway, and was the bookwriter of Disney's Tarzan, with songs by Phil Collins. He is currently writing The Forgotten Arm with singer/songwriter Aimee Mann & Paul Bryant, based on her album, for the Public Theatre.
Mr. Hwang's other plays include FOB (1981 Obie Award), The Dance & the Railroad (1982 Drama Desk Nomination, CINE Golden Eagle Award), 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.
Off Broadway's Signature Theater named David Henry Hwang the Residency One Playwright for its 2012-13 season, and will produce revivals of Golden Child and Dance and the Railroad, as well as the world premiere of a new work, KUNG FU. In addition, he is writing a play on the American colonial experience in the Philippines for Oregon Shakespeare Festival and Arena Stage.
According to Opera News, Mr. Hwang is America’s most-produced living opera librettist, and has written a four works with composer Philip Glass: 1000 Airplanes on the Roof (1988), The Voyage, which premiered at the Metropolitan Opera in 1992 and was revived there in 1996, and The Sound of a Voice at American Repertory Theatre in 2003, as well as Icarus at the Edge of Time, based on the book by theoretical physicist Brian Greene. The Silver River, with music by Bright Sheng, was produced at the 1998 Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, 2000 Spoleto Festival USA and the 2002 Lincoln Center Festival. Ainadamar, with music by Osvaldo Golijov,starring soprano Dawn Upshaw, 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 by OPERNWELT as 2007 “World Premiere of the Year.” The Fly, an opera with music by Howard Shore, directed by David Cronenberg premiered in Paris’ Théâtre du Châtelet in July 2008. Mr. Hwang also 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, a 1993 Warner Brothers release starring Jeremy Irons and John Lone, directed by David Cronenberg; Golden Gate (Samuel Goldwyn Co., 1994), starring Matt Dillon and Joan Chen, directed by John Madden; The Lost Empire, a four-hour NBC television miniseries (Hallmark Entertainment, 2001); and Possession (co-writer, USA Films, 2002), starring Gwyneth Paltrow, directed by Neil LaBute. He has also done screenwriting work for Martin Scorsese, Sydney Pollack, Tim Burton, Jean-Jacques Annaud, Jessica Lange, Bette Midler, Michael Douglas, and Robin Williams, among others. He is Executive Producer of White Frog, directed by Quentin Lee (The People I've Slept With), and is currently writing Bob's Gang, an original screenplay for director Jonathan Caouette (Tarnation), as well as a feature film for Dreamworks Animation, and the movie adaptation of Chinglish, to be directed by Justin Lin (Better Luck Tomorrow, the Fast and Furious franchise).
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. He has been honored with awards from the Asian American Legal Defense & Education Fund (1989), the Association for Asian Pacific American Artists (1989 & 1991), the Museum of Chinese in the Americas (1995), East West Players (1997), the Organization of Chinese Americans (1997), the Media Action Network for Asian Americans (1998), the Center for Migration Studies (1998), the Asian American Resource Workshop (2000), China Institute (2001), the New York Foundation for the Arts (2001), Urban Stages (2002), Asian Professional Extension (2002), Second Generation/Remy Martin (2002), the Asian American Federation of New York (2003), the Asian American Theatre Company (2003), the California State Legislature (2003), the Cherry Lane Theatre (2006), Ma-Yi Theatre (2007) and the Lark Play Development Center (2007). In 1998, the nation's oldest Asian American theatre company, East West Players, christened its new mainstage The David Henry Hwang Theatre.Recently, Mr. Hwang has been honored with the 2011 PEN/Laura Pels Award for a Master American Dramatist, the 2012 William Inge Award for Distinguished Achievement in the American Theatre, the 2012 Asia Society Cultural Achievement Award, and the 2012 China Institute Blue Cloud Award. In April 2012, off Broadway's Signature Theater named David Henry Hwang the Residency One Playwright for its 2012-13 season.
From 1994-2001, Mr. Hwang served by appointment of President Clinton on the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities. He currently sits on the boards of the Dramatists Guild, the American Theatre Wing, the Lark Play Development Center, and Young Playwrights Inc.
David Henry Hwang attended Stanford University and the Yale School of Drama, and holds honorary degrees from Columbia College, Chicago, The American Conservatory Theatre, and LeHigh University. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife, actress Kathryn Layng, and their children, Noah David and Eva Veanne.
"“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
