An Interview with David Henry Hwang

Leah Reddy: What is your theatre origin story? 

David Henry Hwang: For the most part, I didn't start writing plays and seriously get involved with theatre until I was an undergraduate. Prior to that I'd been a violinist. So, I'd played in pit orchestras for high school musicals, and I was always curious about it. 

If you go back a little further, there’s a company in Los Angeles called East West Players, which is now the nation's oldest Asian American theatre. 

When [East West Players was] founded, I believe in 1965, they did an operetta. And my mother was the pianist for the production. I was about eight and I could either have chosen to be babysat by my aunt or hang out at rehearsal. So, I went to rehearsals, and I don't remember that much to be honest, but I do think in retrospect that it's interesting that at a young age I saw people who looked like me being actors and directors and in positions of artistic administration. 

And maybe that made it more possible when I got to college and started thinking that I wanted to try to write plays. 

LR:  You use imagery and theatrical styles from Asian theatre in a fair number of your works. How did that influence your understanding of the playwriting art form, and do you see any influences of that in Yellow Face? 

DHH: My first play to be produced in New York was written when I was an undergraduate. It's called FOB. We did it in my dorm, and then 14 months later it opened at the Public Theater. 

The play was a comedy about growing up Chinese American in Southern California. But it was set against a mythological backdrop where there were figures from Chinese and Chinese American mythology. 

I borrowed this technique from the author Maxine Hong Kingston whose book, The Woman Warrior, had come out recently. And so, when it came around to staging the [play], at the Public, we started incorporating Chinese theatre forms to tell these mythological stories. 

At the time, I really didn't know anything about Chinese opera. Mako, who was directing, cast an actor named John Lone, who would eventually go on to play the title role in Bertolucci's movie The Last Emperor. John had been brought up in Cantonese Opera, so he had a lot of knowledge, and I learned from him. 

Then I wrote a second play, The Dance in the Railroad, which also ended up at the Public, specifically for John and another dancer-actor named Tzi Ma who now is everybody's Asian dad on television or in movies. That also attempted to incorporate Chinese opera forms. 

I continued to work with these techniques through M. Butterfly and other plays. I think when it comes to Yellow Face, I was purposely trying to get away from that because I felt like my use of Asian stagecraft was maybe a little exotic, and it might be interesting to try to do a play where I didn't incorporate any of those techniques. You could argue that the structure and the meta and the upfront theatricalism in Yellow Face has a relationship to Asian theatre forms the same way that it has a relationship to say Brecht, who was also very influenced by these same forms. 

LR: It’s been 16 years since Yellow Face was produced in New York. Why do you think this moment is particularly good for it?  

DHH: When we first did Yellow Face in '07, '08, first in LA then at the Public, we actually used to joke about the play ever getting to Broadway because I wrote it at the encouragement of the then-artistic director of East West Players, Tim Dang. He was like, "You haven't written a play in a while." And I was like, "Yeah, you're right." I thought of it as being a play very much for the Asian American Pacific Islander community, with a lot of references that you kind of have to be Asian probably to know. 

So, it didn't feel like Yellow Face was ever going to be mainstream enough to get to Broadway. It's very gratifying that the play has grown in stature over the years, and that the culture has moved too, and what was at the center of cultural discourse has changed.  

We did an audio version of this play for Audible with Daniel Dae Kim and [director] Leigh [Silverman] did a table read on the first day for people. And it felt funnier than it did in '07 because the issues that are at the core of the comedy have become so much more a part of our national discourse than they were 15 years ago. So it feels like that time is right to bring it to Broadway after all these years. 

LR: We understand that you're making some revisions to the script. Can you share what you're exploring with those revisions? 

DHH: This play was always meant to be a one act, and it just got too long. And I remember that before our first preview in Los Angeles [in 2007], we decided, “Okay, it needs an act break." 

So Leigh said, "I'm just going to turn out the lights. And actors, you guys all run off-stage." 

We wanted to try to get it back to that one act. Leigh calls this play a shape shifter. It starts out as one thing, and then it goes to a different place by the end. To have that experience all in one go felt right then, and we're trying to get back to that now. 

And the original cast was Asian people and white people. We wanted to expand that now in light of how the culture has moved and how we regard casting across race differently than we did in '07. 

That also raises some interesting questions. Because the play is about casting, Leigh really encouraged me that, "Oh, we should incorporate some of those discussions into the play itself.” I think we found a way to do it that's fun and keeping in the same comedic spirit. 

LR: You have a long relationship with, not only Leigh Silverman, but a couple other folks who are working on this show. What makes a successful collaboration for you? 

DHH: Francis Jue, I've worked with many times, as well as Anita Yavich, the Costume Designer. It's primarily that you feel like you understand each other's aesthetic and purpose, that what I feel is true and what I feel is my best work can dovetail with what these collaborators feel is true and their best work. 

Where it comes to Leigh, she is really good with dramaturgy. She is a very text-centered director, and not someone who normally does revivals, except that in this case, she was the original director. She is less interested in imposing a directorial stamp on a work than she is in trying to realize what it is that the author intends. That certainly works well for me.  

Also, I'm not particularly visual. My ears are better than my eyes, and I need to work with someone who has a good visual sense. So we complement each other well, and at this point, have a shorthand, which just makes things much more efficient. 

LR: Something that has come up in Yellow Face as resonating for students and many other audience members is the story of having an immigrant parent. You wrote a fictionalized version of your father into Yellow Face. How did your father's relationship to America shape your understanding, either as a fictionalized version of yourself or as a real version of yourself? 

DHH: My father always wanted me to make him a character in a play. Speaking of students and in particular AAPI students, the question often comes up, "Oh, how did your parents feel about you wanting to go into the theatre?" 

In my parents' case, my dad was an immigrant and he'd never really gone to the theatre or read a play before. When we did this first play of mine, FOB, in my dorm, he wanted to read it. He saw some swear words and he's like, "Oh, I send you to this fancy school and you write all this junk." 

But he also said to my mom, "Well, let's go see the play and if it's good, we'll encourage him. And if it's bad, we'll tell him to stop." And because in FOB, I had incorporated some stories about my father, by the end of the play, he came up to me and was in tears and very moved. 

From that point, he was supportive, but always wanted me to make him a bigger character. In Yellow Face, my father passes away. He was sick when I started writing it. I showed him an early version. And he really liked the way he was portrayed, which tells you a lot about my dad once you see the play. He was a big personality. He was a big America booster.  

I feel like I'm writing him fairly accurately to my experience of him. In real life, he did get caught up in a lot of the anti-Chinese American sentiment of the late 1990s. And The New York Times did publish an article alleging that he was laundering money for China. 

I rolled my eyes as a kid at my father's love for America, but it also kind of inculcates itself in you, even if you are resisting it or rebelling against it. 

My father was pretty assimilationist. He was of that generation where you didn't necessarily teach your kids the root culture language. We didn't celebrate Chinese New Year or anything like that. We were just trying to fit in. That probably helped me to want to learn more about Chinese culture as I grew older, and particularly as I became a playwright. Maybe if I had had the kind of immigrant parent who tried to shove the root culture down my throat, I would've gone the other way and been more assimilationist. 

LR: You've taken a lot of events that have their basis in real events or in your own life and theatricalized them. So, how did this start for you, and what is your writing process?  

DHH: I have written two plays that have DHH characters, both of which are now in production at the same time. We have a production of Soft Power, which has just opened in DC, and then we're obviously rehearsing Yellow Face now. 

It was kind of a weird thing to try to do at first. I felt like I wanted to write a comedy about the growth of multiculturalism, which in 2007 felt like, "Okay, this is just a done deal. This is where America is." In recent years, things have gotten much more problematic in terms of whether the country is accepting diversity or not.  A couple of Asian American filmmakers had put me in their movies playing myself. There's a movie that still exists on the internet called Asian Pride Porn where I play David Henry Hwang, and I'm pitching politically correct Asian porn. 

Then Doug Wright wrote himself into his play, I Am My Own Wife. Lisa Kron wrote herself into several of her works, but she also performed them. 

I thought, "If I'm going to make a comedy about the growth of multiculturalism, I might as well make myself the main character because that way I'm only offending myself." 

There's a real-life event that opens the play and a real-life event that ends the play: the Miss Saigon protest, and the charges against my dad. 

So it made sense to feature an autobiographical character. But because I wanted to do a kind of stage mockumentary, to name the character after myself so that the ambiguity about what's real and what's made up in the play would be enhanced. 

Looking back on that, as well as Soft Power, I think this is true of all people of color, but particularly as Asians we're raised to be a little deferential and self-effacing. So there's something important about asserting our presence and taking up space. That includes, in my case, using my real name. 

I’ve found it gratifying since Yellow Face first opened to see more playwrights doing this: Qui Nguyen, Lauren Yee, and Branden Jacobs-Jenkins. It's kind of become more of a thing. 

LR: What advice do you have for young people or people of any age who are just getting into playwriting, who want to be playwrights? 

DHH: The thing that makes you different, makes you idiosyncratic, makes you weird - that is your superpower as a writer. Because when you write the thing that really comes from yourself and not what you think everybody else wants to see, you're exploring the thing that you really need to explore. 

And it's actually more likely to be successful because you create the thing that only you can create. That doesn't mean you have to name the main character after yourself, but it does mean that you have to write something that only you can write.