The ‘Chinglish’ Journal: A New Chapter

  • April 24, 2012 12:00 pm

On January 29, 2012, CHINGLISH played its last performance on Broadway. Towards the end of 2011, I’d been encouraged as the annual “Top Ten Best in Theatre” lists came out from different publications and we made about a half-dozen of them. TIME Magazine even named CHINGLISH the Best American Play of the year. Our producers put up a new poster in Schubert Alley, at the heart of Times Square.

Still, we didn’t sell enough tickets each week to keep from losing money, so they eventually had to close the show. We ended up lasting about three months – a respectable run, though we certainly would’ve liked to have run longer. Although I’ve learned from my experiences that however long a show a runs, you always feel it should’ve run longer.

Should we have cast a big movie star in the play? In retrospect, that would probably have helped us sell tickets and stay open. Nevertheless, I appreciate that our producers loved this show enough to gamble on going into the cutthroat commercial market of Broadway without one. I’m proud they were brave enough to buck that trend.  Read more...

24 Comments on The ‘Chinglish’ Journal: A New Chapter

Around the Horn: Coming Out to the Parents Edition

  • April 23, 2012 7:08 pm

When I meet with students and aspiring artists, particularly if they’re Asian/Pacific American, I usually get asked, “How did your parents react when you told them you wanted to be a writer?”

Well, I first decided to try my hand at playwriting back in college. And the thing about Asian parents is, generally, so long as you’re getting good grades, they don’t really care what you do in your spare time (one of my favorite movies, Offender Justin’s BETTER LUCK TOMORROW, suggests you can even kill people). So I told my parents that my English major could be used as a pre-law, kept up my grades, and wrote plays in my spare time.

As senior year approached, however, I had to come out to my folks and let them know I was planing for a different kind of future post-college. Fortunately, I wasn’t raised in a “Tiger Mom” family; my mother is a pianist, and my grandmother used to say stuff like, “Why’s everyone so worried about getting ‘A’’s? What’s wrong with a ‘B?’” Still, my Father was a businessman, and it’d be quite a stretch for two immigrant Chinese parents to accept their son going for a career in the theatre.

I’d written my first play, called FOB, to be staged in my college dorm. My Father took a look at the script; he’d never read a play before, saw some swear words, and said, “I send you to that fancy school, and you write this junk?”

Then he told my Mom, “We’re going to go see this play of Dave’s. If it’s good, we’ll encourage him, and if it’s bad, we’ll tell him to stop.”  Read more...

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Around the Horn: Puberty and Other Signs of Aging

  • December 19, 2011 9:33 am

I’ve been thinking lately about growing older. I suppose I’m the right age for that, having turned 54 this year. Though actually, I had my first midlife crisis back when I was 27, so this aging thing has been a periodic preoccupation for me. Like they say, getting older certainly beats the alternative. And currently, I find myself wanting to do new things: like I acted, playing a character for the first time, in Offender Quentin’s upcoming feature WHITE FROG. Also, I’ve learned that I enjoy cooking for my family (for some really easy, yet really tasty, recipes, I recommend Ming Tsai’s book SIMPLY MING). Moreover, I’ve started rediscovering some earlier interests. Back in college and during my 20’s, I was a jazz and electric violinist. I’d let my music go over the decades, but recently, I picked my instrument up again and started playing some gigs. So, as midlife crises go, this one’s been pretty enjoyable and constructive.

DDH at age 17.

One compensation of getting older if you’re Asian American, is that people tend to think you’re younger than you actually are. Sometimes when friends point this out, I reply that looking younger now makes up for having spent my early-20’s looking like a 15 year-old, which was no fun at all. A middle-aged Asian guy once shared with me his theory about this: he believed that Asian males develop physically more slowly than our non-Asian counterparts. It seemed like a wacky idea at the time, but over the years, the notion has sorta stuck in my head. I mean, I do think I hit puberty later than most of my friends, and it didn’t finish for me til I was like 22. Whereas in general, we tend think of puberty happening, what, like between 12 and 18-19, right?

I figure the Offenders are as good a group as any to poll on this issue. Is it possible that Asians, as a very broad generalization, are physical “late bloomers,” which then ends up being advantageous in middle age? (This guy’s theory concerned men, but let’s include
women too.) Or is the whole notion ridiculous and my own experience was just a personal thing?

And here’s a bonus question: in my mind, I think I’m still 35. How old are you in your own mind?  Read more...

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The ‘Chinglish’ Broadway Journal: Post-Opening (Nov. 21, 2011)

  • November 21, 2011 12:02 am

We’re into the fourth week of our Broadway run, and I’m happy to report that things are looking pretty good. If you’ve followed the CHINGLISH blog posts, you’ll remember that Broadway is a commercial venture, and therefore all about profits and losses. True, we don’t have particularly large weekly grosses when compared to some of our counterparts. However, since we don’t have a big movie star in the cast, our running costs are also very low. Therefore, as of this writing, we’ve made money — not a huge amount, but some — every week, including during previews.

Significantly, our producers continue to believe in our show and are in this for the long haul. Their original budget included a large fund to cover potential losses, which we’ve not yet had to tap. So we’re in good shape. Of course, the hope is that good word of mouth kicks in, and our weekly grosses will continue to grow.  Read more...

8 Comments on The ‘Chinglish’ Broadway Journal: Post-Opening (Nov. 21, 2011)

The ‘Chinglish’ Broadway Journal: Week 7 (Nov. 1, 2011)

  • November 1, 2011 12:00 pm

Playwright David Henry Hwang continues his weekly report from rehearsals opening night of the Broadway premiere of his new play CHINGLISH, which officially opened last Thursday.

If you’re a dramatist lucky enough to get a show on Broadway, you know Opening Night will be one evening you’ll never forget. I’m fortunate beyond words, because CHINGLISH was my seventh Broadway show (though only my sixth opening; I had one play that closed in previews, but we’ll save that story for another post).

CHINGLISH opened on Thursday, October 27. It’s customary to present little gifts and cards to everyone involved with the show. Weeks ago, Leigh and I had decided to give chops — you know, those Chinese name stamp things — reading “Chinglish.” Joanna had them made for us in Hong Kong, and Ken served as our tireless mule, lugging a hundred across the Pacific from his recent trip there. The last two preview performances, Leigh and I hunkered in her dressing room, listening to the show on the backstage speakers while writing thank-you cards.

October 27 dawned cold and rainy. A Broadway opening is sorta like a wedding. Friends and relatives from around the world show up to cheer you on. I got a limo and traveled with my family, first to a reception for the Goodman Theatre, which had so beautifully hosted our show in Chicago, and then to the Longacre for Joanna’s ritual burning of incense and presentation of the roast pig.

Check out THIS awesome Opening Night gift, from understudy Vivian Chiu: CHINGLISH cookies!  Read more...

3 Comments on The ‘Chinglish’ Broadway Journal: Week 7 (Nov. 1, 2011)

The ‘Chinglish’ Broadway Journal: Week 6 (Oct. 25, 2011)

  • October 25, 2011 1:15 pm

David Henry Hwang continues his weekly report from rehearsals previews of the Broadway premiere of his new play CHINGLISH, which officially opens this Thursday.

DHH in front of the theater (photo by Lia Chang)

This is the part of the process I like least.

We froze the show — no more changes — last Friday. The new ending worked, so that’s the final text. Over this past weekend, critics started arriving. Thursday, October 27, is our opening night and, as those of you who followed the Chicago blogs may remember, reviews will start appearing online that same evening. In the meantime, there’s nothing to do but wait.

At the end of our final rehearsal last Friday, I told the actors that this is how I imagine I’ll feel when my kids go off to college. It’s time to let the child go out into the world, and make its own way. When an actor is the first to do a new part, he or she is said to have “originated” that role. In some cases, the CHINGLISH actors literally suggested line changes which got incorporated into the script. But simply by virtue of having embodied these characters, each one of them influenced how I continued to rewrite and develop this play, which, if we’re lucky, will have a future life and become part of American theatrical literature.  Read more...

12 Comments on The ‘Chinglish’ Broadway Journal: Week 6 (Oct. 25, 2011)

The ‘Chinglish’ Broadway Journal: Week 5 (Oct. 18, 2011)

  • October 18, 2011 6:14 pm

David Henry Hwang continues his weekly report from rehearsals of the Broadway premiere of his new play CHINGLISH.

We’ve just finished our first week of previews, and learned many things, among them:

1. The laughs are all still there, becoming more solid and powerful over our first eight performances, as the actors’ performances get tighter and more focused.

2. The show seems to be playing more emotionally than it did in Chicago. Audiences are getting into the love story, following its twists and turns. As a result, the play’s surface comedy and its deeper underlying issues feel more balanced, perhaps giving the evening a little more gravitas.

3. We can still make the play a little tighter, and button the ending a bit more clearly.

There’s a Broadway tradition of asking colleagues you trust to give notes at this point in the process: when you’re doing your final fixes before “freezing” the show. The great American playwright Neil Simon was nicknamed “Doc Simon” for his skill at diagnosing a play. Of course, if you feel your show is in trouble, you might bring in help earlier. But we’re feeling good about our progress, so are just covering our bases for some final nips and tucks.  Read more...

1 Comment on The ‘Chinglish’ Broadway Journal: Week 5 (Oct. 18, 2011)

The ‘Chinglish’ Broadway Journal: Week 4 (Oct. 10, 2011)

  • October 10, 2011 1:08 pm

With this post, Tony Award-winning playwright David Henry Hwang (or DHH) has been “upgraded” from Guest Offender status to full blown Offender. DDH continues his weekly report from rehearsals for the Broadway premiere of his new play CHINGLISH. Today, week 4…

This has been a busy week for our show. On Wednesday, we finished our last day in the rehearsal hall, and celebrated with a Sour Fish Soup banquet, organized by our Cultural Advisors Joanna & Ken. Sour Fish Soup is a specialty of Guizhou Province, where our play is set. I’ve eaten it twice on previous trips to China, and, since hot and sour are my favorite flavors, had a craving for it ever since. But, so far as I’ve been able to tell, Guizhou cuisine has not yet made it to either New York or LA. So Ken & Joanna brought back the necessary ingredients from their last trip to the region, and Wu Liang Ye, an excellent Sichuan restaurant in Midtown Manhattan, kindly agreed to prepare it for us. The dish proved too spicy for many of our group, which left more for me! (I had four helpings.)

Our producers, including co-Lead Producer Jeffrey Richards, center in the open shirt. They hardly drank any Sour Fish Soup (on the hot plate). On Jeffrey’s left, however, our Projections Co-Designer Shawn Duan, whose Mom comes from Sichuan, ate a lot!

Then it was on to the Longacre Theatre. You may recall from Chicago that this particular meeting of superstitious cultures — Chinese and theatre people — has led Joanna to create good luck rituals for us. So we carried incense (in a counter-clockwise direction, per Daoist tradition, so I’m told) from our rehearsal hall on 42nd Street to our theatre on 48th St. Right through the heart of Times Square.  Read more...

6 Comments on The ‘Chinglish’ Broadway Journal: Week 4 (Oct. 10, 2011)

The ‘Chinglish’ Broadway Journal: Week 3 (Oct. 3, 2011)

  • October 3, 2011 3:35 pm

DHH

Tony Award-winning playwright David Henry Hwang (M. BUTTERFLY) is in rehearsals for the Broadway premiere of his latest play CHINGLISH following a hugely successful run in Chicago at the historic Goodman Theater. DHH has graciously agreed to blog weekly throughout the rehearsal process to give our readers a glimpse into how a major theatrical production comes to life. 

Sometimes, you can start to dislike one of your own characters. A figure from CHINGLISH who has deepened through the New York leg of our journey is Peter Timms, a white English expat living in China, who our American businessman hires as his translator and consultant. Peter started out as a composite of the many non-Chinese expats I’d met during my trips over there. In some ways, they are the reverse of my parents: immigrants who traveled from the West to Asia. They could also, however, be considered the descendants of Colonialists from earlier centuries who settled in the “Orient” to rule and exploit it. And, in today’s bustling Chinese economy, Mandarin-speaking Westerners in their 20’s can experience a range of exciting opportunities which they would probably not have access to back home.

Peter, however, is not one of those young Westerners. He’s in his early-40’s, and has lived in China almost twenty years. Which means, he arrived there when the country was still poor, and foreigners relatively rare. So Peter’s a bit of a relic. When he first arrived, simply being a white guy who spoke Mandarin made him instantly employable. But China has changed a lot, and he doesn’t want to be left behind.  Read more...

7 Comments on The ‘Chinglish’ Broadway Journal: Week 3 (Oct. 3, 2011)

The ‘Chinglish’ Broadway Journal: Week 2 (Sept. 26, 2011)

  • September 26, 2011 12:05 am

DHH

Tony Award-winning playwright David Henry Hwang (M. BUTTERFLY) is in rehearsals for the Broadway premiere of his latest play CHINGLISH following a hugely successful run in Chicago at the historic Goodman Theater. DHH has graciously agreed to blog weekly throughout the rehearsal process to give our readers a glimpse into how a major theatrical production comes to life. Today, the start of rehearsals for the Broadway premiere.

We’ve just finished our second week of rehearsals, and I’m struggling with a feeling which I also experienced in Chicago: things seem to be going really smoothly, what’s the catch? When’s the other shoe gonna drop? Christine, one of our cast members, said to me last night, “You’re sort of a worrier, aren’t you?” Er, maybe. But opening a show is sorta like giving birth. Even when things seem to be going well, you stay alert for signs of trouble.

Our new cast member, Gary Wilmes, who plays Daniel, the white American businessman, has a challenging task. Everyone else in the company went through a full rehearsal process in Chicago, then performed the show before audiences eight times a week, for six weeks. Gary’s got to learn his lines, find his character, understand the arc of the scenes, and basically get up to speed with his fellow cast members. And to his credit, he wants to do this work honestly, not just go through the motions. Gary compared this to jumping onto a moving train. I imagine it can’t be easy to be the guy in the room starting out way behind everyone else. But he’s tackled his assignment with grace, humor, and loads of hard work. And the cast has supported him with affection and generosity. This week, Gary’s labors really started to bear fruit. His scenes now feel energized, confident, and emotional. Which also makes them funnier. Because sometimes the best humor comes, not out of trying to make people laugh, but from feeling things more intensely, being more invested in the stakes of a situation, than people in everyday life.  Read more...

3 Comments on The ‘Chinglish’ Broadway Journal: Week 2 (Sept. 26, 2011)

The ‘Chinglish’ Broadway Journal: Week 1 (Sept. 19, 2011)

  • September 19, 2011 12:05 am

DHH
Tony Award-winning playwright David Henry Hwang (M. BUTTERFLY) is in rehearsals for the Broadway premiere of his latest play CHINGLISH following a hugely successful run in Chicago at the historic Goodman Theater. DHH has graciously agreed to blog weekly throughout the rehearsal process to give our readers a glimpse into how a major theatrical production comes to life. Today, the start of rehearsals for the Broadway premiere.

“They say the neon lights are bright On Broadway/They say there’s always magic in the air”
- “On Broadway” (Mann/Weil/Lieber/Stoller)

It’s the Great White Way. It’s the Main Stem. It’s one of the world’s most recognizable brands. It’s Broadway, a mythic word which conjures images of musicals, chorus girls and boys, bright lights, and flashy marquees. This week, my new play, CHINGLISH, began rehearsals to open on October 27 at the Longacre Theatre. On Broadway.

To those of you who followed my CHINGLISH blogs from Chicago (links to the Chicago blogs below), thanks for supporting us in our premiere production. When we last left off, our show had opened to great reviews in the Windy City, and our producers had announced we would be moving to Broadway. In the weeks that followed, CHINGLISH ended up becoming the most successful play (not musical) produced in the history of the Goodman Theatre. The show’s run was extended an additional week by popular demand. Its closing performances were attended by Illinois Governor Pat Quinn and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel (former Chief of Staff to the POTUS).  Read more...

1 Comment on The ‘Chinglish’ Broadway Journal: Week 1 (Sept. 19, 2011)

The ‘Chinglish’ Journal: Week 7 (July 4, 2011)

  • July 4, 2011 12:01 am

DHH

Tony Award-winning playwright David Henry Hwang (M. BUTTERFLY) just opened his latest play CHINGLISH in Chicago where it is having its world premiere at the historic Goodman Theater now-July 24. DHH has graciously agreed to blog regularly throughout the rehearsal process to give our readers a glimpse into how a major theatrical production comes to life. Today, the final blog from Chicago. Next up in the fall: New York and Broadway.

It’s been quite a week. Last Monday, June 27, was our Opening Night. Joanna & Ken ordered a 35-pound roast suckling pig, which they set up backstage in the wings. About 45 minutes before curtain time, Leigh and I rushed from a Western ritual for the Goodman’s patrons and special guests, to the Asian ritual, where Joanna handed me a stick of lit incense and told me to stick it into an orange. After eating some pork, we dashed back to the Western ceremony, where I gave a speech.

Leigh and I in our opening night togs, photographed by my wonderful wife, Kathryn Layng

In many ways, Opening Nights are a cruel ritual. Why? Because the reviews, at least in New York (and I’ve now learned, in Chicago too), come out that same evening. YOMYOMF readers can probably recall scenes from old movies where critics rush from opening night to their typewriters and dash off reviews (like the famous one in CITIZEN KANE). Well, it’s not quite like that any longer. Nowadays, theatres designate one or more of the final preview performances as critics’ nights. This gives the reviewers more lead time to write their pieces. Ours was the previous evening, Sunday night. So by the time you arrive for opening, your fate is already sealed — you just don’t know what it is yet.  Read more...

4 Comments on The ‘Chinglish’ Journal: Week 7 (July 4, 2011)