Noted American playwright, screenwriter, and librettist David Henry Hwang who wrote the 1988 Tony Award for Best Play M Butterfly, which is currently playing at Maybank Performing Arts Theater and will run until Sept.30, is coming to Manila to conduct a strictly by invitation only “Master Class” on Sept. 28 at 3:00 p.m..
Presented by Jhett Tolentino and Frontrow Entertainment, the David Henry Hwang Master Class will focus on playwrighting.
Tony and Grammy Award winner Jhett Tolentino will host the one-hour event to be attended by theater/drama students from select schools and universities; and noted personalities in Philippine theater industry.
Hwang’s parents were both Chinese-born, though his mother was reared in the Philippines. They immigrated separately to the United States, where they met, married, and raised their family.
The only son and the oldest of three siblings, Hwang attended Stanford University (B.A., 1979), where his first play, FOB (an acronym for “fresh off the boat”), was first produced in 1979 (published 1983). The work, which examines the immigrant experience from an Asian American perspective, won an Obie Award in 1980–81 for Best New American Play.
Between graduating from college and winning the Obie, Hwang had enrolled in the Yale School of Drama to gain a better sense of theatre history. During his year in that program, he penned two short plays—The Dance and the Railroad (produced 1981), about two Chinese immigrant railroad workers and their expectations, and The House of Sleeping Beauties (produced 1983), adapted from a short story by Japanese writer Kawabata Yasunari—first performed in an omnibus production with The Sound of a Voice as Sound and Beauty. Hwang later adapted The Sound of a Voice into a libretto for an opera collaboration (2003) with American composer Philip Glass.
Some of Hwang’s projects involved music in some way. He cowrote the book for Aida (2000), which featured music by British rocker Sir Elton John and lyrics by British lyricist Sir Tim Riceand was based loosely on the Verdi opera of the same name; wrote a new book for the revival of the musical Flower Drum Song (2002); and wrote the book for an original musical-comedy version of Tarzan (2006).
His stage comedy Yellow Face was first performed in 2007. It is both a reflection on Hwang’s activism regarding the use of non-Asian actors in Asian roles (which he compared to blackface minstrelsy) and an examination of the role of “face” (a Chinese concept embodying dignity, reputation, and respect) in American society.
In 2011 Chinglish appeared on Broadway. It was written in English and Mandarin (with supertitles) and examined the subject of cultural and linguistic misunderstandings.
