The ‘Chinglish’ Journal: Week 6 (June 27, 2011)

  • June 27, 2011 1:23 pm

DHH

Tony Award-winning playwright David Henry Hwang (M. BUTTERFLY) is in rehearsals for his latest play CHINGLISH in Chicago where it will have its world premiere at the historic Goodman Theater now-July 24 (opening night is tonight). 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.

Overture, Curtains, Lights!
This is it, the night of nights!
No more rehearsing and nursing a part,
We know every part by heart!

As a baby boomer, I can’t help but remember, “This Is It,” the theme song (written by Mack David & Jerry Livingston) from THE BUGS BUNNY SHOW, whenever I get to an opening night. This evening, Monday, June 27, 7 pm Central Standard Time, is indeed “It.”

We had a very productive week of preview performances. The new ending which I wrote and Leigh staged at Tuesday’s rehearsal seems to work very well, giving our show a “button,” and our audiences a little more to think about as they leave the theatre. Leigh continued to polish the acting and production, while I trimmed lines that weren’t buying us anything. If a moment is neither funny nor adds to our understanding of the plot or characters, it’s gotta go. Two weeks ago, Act One ran an hour and fifteen minutes, without scene transitions. Today, including scene changes, it runs an hour and eight. As a writer, I geek out over those kinds of numbers, they make me incredibly happy.

Our final rehearsal was Saturday afternoon. This is always a bittersweet moment. I imagine it’s akin to watching your kid graduate from college (which I also expect to experience in the coming decade). This has been an unusually blissful rehearsal process. The cast gets along incredibly well, and we all believe so much in what we’re doing here. This Is It: when the creative team hands over the show to the actors and running crew. It’s been ours; now, it belongs to them.  Read more...

5 Comments on The ‘Chinglish’ Journal: Week 6 (June 27, 2011)

The ‘Chinglish’ Journal: Week 5 (June 20, 2011)

  • June 20, 2011 3:50 pm

DHH

Tony Award-winning playwright David Henry Hwang (M. BUTTERFLY) is in rehearsals for his latest play CHINGLISH in Chicago where it will have its world premiere at the historic Goodman Theater from June 18-July 24. DHH has graciously agreed to blog regularly (tentatively every Monday) throughout the rehearsal process to give our readers a glimpse into how a major theatrical production comes to life.

The audience is laughing a lot! We’ve now played three public performances, but our show won’t officially open until next Monday, June 27. We’re going through previews.

I like to think of the audience as the final collaborators in the creation of a show. Plays aren’t really written to be read (though it’s a nice bonus when they get published). They’re meant to be performed in front of live people. I believe there’re two points in the process when you learn the truth about your play: the first time you hear it read out loud, and the first time it’s performed in front of an audience.

The audience is rarely wrong. I don’t mean that suggestions from individual patrons are necessarily right (though occasionally, they can be). I’m talking about the audience as a whole, as an organism. If I think I’ve written something funny, and no one’s laughing, it’s not funny. Period. The end. If I think a moment is deeply moving, but audience members are shifting in their seats or looking at their watches … you get the idea. If they’re not reacting the way we hoped, it’s not their fault, it’s ours – either the script’s or the production’s.  Read more...

1 Comment on The ‘Chinglish’ Journal: Week 5 (June 20, 2011)

The ‘Chinglish’ Journal: Week 4 (June 13, 2011)

  • June 13, 2011 3:51 pm

DHH

Tony Award-winning playwright David Henry Hwang (M. BUTTERFLY) is in rehearsals for his latest play CHINGLISH in Chicago where it will have its world premiere at the historic Goodman Theater from June 18-July 24. DHH has graciously agreed to blog regularly (tentatively every Monday) throughout the rehearsal process to give our readers a glimpse into how a major theatrical production comes to life.

We are now two weeks away from Opening Night on June 27. You try to write the best play you can, give it a home at one of the country’s leading theatres, work with the most skilled director, hire talented and experienced actors and designers – but you never really know what’s going to happen.

I’m best-known for a play called M. BUTTERFLY, which won the Tony Award back in 1988 and was a hit around the world. But when that show first premiered, in Washington D.C., the critics were far from impressed. The WASHINGTON POST wrote, “You will not have an easy time wending your way through M. BUTTERFLY … Hwang’s net is riddled with holes and the elusive prey flutters forever out of reach.” VARIETY declared, “This is not Broadway material.” One of our producers, Stuart Ostrow, continued to believe in the show and literally mortgaged his house to get us to New York, where, fortunately, the story had a happy ending. But it could’ve easily gone the other way.  Read more...

9 Comments on The 'Chinglish' Journal: Week 4 (June 13, 2011)

The ‘Chinglish’ Journal: Week 3 (June 6, 2011)

  • June 6, 2011 9:58 am

DHH

Tony Award-winning playwright David Henry Hwang (M. BUTTERFLY) is in rehearsals for his latest play CHINGLISH in Chicago where it will have its world premiere at the historic Goodman Theater from June 18-July 24. DHH has graciously agreed to blog regularly (tentatively every Monday) throughout the rehearsal process to give our readers a glimpse into how a major theatrical production comes to life.

This is a really Big Room. I don’t mean the literal size of the room (though, actually, it does happen to be one of the larger rehearsal halls I’ve worked in). I’m talking about the number of people it takes to make this show happen. On Broadway musicals, you expect a large room. The principal creative team on a musical, besides the playwright (which musicals call the “bookwriter”), includes the director, composer, lyricist, choreographer, musical director, etc. – all of whom generally come with their own assistants and staff. That’s a lot of people.

On a play, by contrast, there are usually only two principal creatives: the playwright and director. The storytelling of CHINGLISH, however, requires a larger cast of backstage characters. Let’s say I want to rewrite a line of dialogue. I do it in English (cuz that’s all I know). If that line needs to be spoken in Chinese, it goes to Candace for translation (which sometimes involves input from Joanna, one of our two Cultural Advisors). Candace then uses an online program to convert the characters into pinyin, a Chinese system of transliterating Mandarin into the Western alphabet, which some of our actors read more easily than ideographs. The English, Chinese, and pinyin all go to Tony, my assistant, for formatting, then finally to Lou, our new literary intern, to print out pages for distribution. Also, Shawn, our projections operator, needs to redo the English supertitles.  Read more...

8 Comments on The 'Chinglish' Journal: Week 3 (June 6, 2011)

The ‘Chinglish’ Journal: Week 2 (May 30, 2011)

  • May 30, 2011 12:02 am

DHH

Tony Award-winning playwright David Henry Hwang (M. BUTTERFLY) is in rehearsals for his latest play CHINGLISH in Chicago where it will have its world premiere at the historic Goodman Theater from June 18-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.

We’ve completed our second week of rehearsals, and things still seem to be going remarkably well. Leigh (the show’s director) keeps the rehearsal room humming with her energy, insights, and sense of humor. Our actors are digging into the script, making discoveries, and deepening their characterizations. Surprisingly, they’re all easy to work with – not a prima donna in the bunch.

As the playwright, my job in rehearsals is to provide insight into the play when appropriate, but, most importantly, to continue rewriting and fine-tuning the script. Unlike some writers, I don’t like to follow along in the text as the actors run scenes. I believe playwriting is sort of like writing music, where the notes on the staff are less important than how they sound in the air. Therefore, a part of me couldn’t care less about the words on the page. Because we’re not publishing a book, here, we’re putting on a show, and the audience isn’t going to be looking at my script, they’re going to be watching and listening to what’s happening onstage.

So I do the same: watch the actors, and listen to the scenes. I’m constantly on the lookout for stuff that feels false, forced, overwritten, cheesy – moments which neither illuminate character nor move the plot forward. When that happens, I get a bad feeling — I grow bored, or slightly nauseous.  Read more...

7 Comments on The 'Chinglish' Journal: Week 2 (May 30, 2011)

The ‘Chinglish’ Journal: Week 1 (May 23, 2011)

  • May 23, 2011 6:35 pm

DHH

Tony Award-winning playwright David Henry Hwang (M. BUTTERFLY) has just started rehearsals for his latest play CHINGLISH in Chicago where it will have its world premiere at the historic Goodman Theater from June 18-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. And so it begins…

It’s what we playwrights work and live for. It can lead to great success, or humiliating failure. And the twists and turns it will take, not to mention its final outcome, are completely unpredictable.

I’m talking about the world premiere of a new show. This week, my latest play, CHINGLISH, began rehearsals for its opening on June 27 at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago. I’ll try to give YOMYOMF readers a glimpse into this process, by posting regular updates through opening night. I’m shooting for one blog a week (on Mondays), but we’ll see. Like I said, it’s all impossible to predict.

A little background on the play itself. CHINGLISH is set in the present, and concerns a non-Chinese American businessman who travels to the Chinese provincial capital of Guiyang, to try and make a deal. I started thinking about business in contemporary China because I’ve been traveling there fairly regularly lately – about once or twice a year over the past five or six years. Broadway-style theatre has become quite popular in China, particularly in major cities like Beijing and Shanghai. The Chinese government has made it something of a national priority to create a homegrown musical which will end up on Broadway. Which is both bizarre and sort of cool. I happen to be the only even nominally-Chinese person who’s ever written a Broadway show, so I started getting a lot of invitations to go over and talk about potential projects. Unsurprisingly, none of the big schemes proposed has ever materialized. But it’s been a great opportunity for me to learn about China today, arguably the most exciting place in the world. (And I would argue that Shanghai today is the world’s best party city.)  Read more...

16 Comments on The 'Chinglish' Journal: Week 1 (May 23, 2011)

Joe Papp & Me

  • March 2, 2011 10:47 am

DHH

David Henry Hwang is a regular YOMYOMF Guest Offender and playwright who has been producing plays, musicals and operas for three decades. He was a Pulitzer Prize finalist and won the Tony Award for his play M. BUTTERFLY and also writes for movies and television. His latest play CHINGLISH has its world premiere this June at the historic Goodman Theatre in Chicago.

Joseph Papp was hands-down the most important American theatre producer of the last half of the 20th century. Maybe, of the entire century. He founded the New York Shakespeare Festival, Shakespeare in the Park, and the Public Theatre; produced hit musicals like HAIR, PIRATES OF PENZANCE, and A CHORUS LINE; and championed most of the major American dramatists of his day, including Sam Shepard, David Mamet, David Rabe, Ntozake Shange, Charles Gordone, John Guare, Elizabeth Swados, Wallace Shawn, etc.

He also gave me my first production.

He was born Joseph Papirofsky, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants, and grew up in terrible poverty in Brooklyn, New York. Joe was complicated, difficult and unpredictable — but always passionate. During the 1950’s, he was called before the notorious House Un-American Activities Committee, accused of being a Communist, lost his job as a stage manager at CBS, then successfully sued to get it back.

Joe believed culture belonged to the masses, and fought the tyrannical “master builder” of New York, Robert Moses, to build a free theatre in Central Park. The plays he loved confronted social and political issues, often written by playwrights from underprivileged or minority backgrounds. He cast “ethnic” actors in “mainstream” roles long before the term “non-traditional casting” had been invented.  Read more...

9 Comments on Joe Papp & Me

Why I Hate (writing for) the Movies

  • October 25, 2010 8:50 pm

DHH

David Henry Hwang is a playwright who has been producing plays, musicals and operas for three decades. He won the Tony Award for his play M. BUTTERFLY and also writes for movies and television. He spent the past weekend in San Diego to help YOMYOMF celebrate the end of INTERPRETATIONS at the San Diego Asian Film Festival and to attend the production of his play YELLOW FACE at the Mo’olelo Performing Arts Company which runs until this weekend. 

Having just served as a juror for INTERPRETATIONS and returned from the impressive San Diego Asian Film Festival, I find myself inspired by the talent, dedication, and passion that went into each and every film. This causes me to reflect on my own experiences as a screenwriter working on movies, most of which did not get made, as well as the handful that did.

I should explain that I come to the filmmaking world as something of an outsider. I’m not referring so much to my being Asian, as that I’m basically a theatre guy, having written plays, Broadway musicals, and libretti for operas. So, as a writer, I am spoiled. In every form involving scripts, someone holds the primary creative vision, which the other collaborating artists support. In opera, for instance, that person is the composer. When it comes to plays, it’s the playwright.  Read more...

7 Comments on Why I Hate (writing for) the Movies

Working with Prince

  • June 28, 2010 12:00 am

DHH

David Henry Hwang is a playwright who has been producing plays, musicals and operas for three decades. He won the Tony Award for his play M. BUTTERFLY and also writes for movies and television. After his previous blogs where he unleashed his Asian Shame and discussed his worst career moves (see here, here and here), he turns to write about something more…funky.

Growing up, I listened to lots of music, but the two artists who meant most to me were David Bowie and Prince. I discovered Prince through his 1980 album DIRTY MIND. See, back in 1980, there was black music, and there was white music. Period. I listened mostly to black artists cuz I imagined most of the white guys would just as soon beat me up as pick up their guitars. Unless they were British, in which case they might not beat me up cuz, I dunno, they had cool accents.

But Prince. DIRTY MIND. What WAS this? Kinda R&B, kinda New Wave. Kinda disco, kinda … punk? How was this guy managing to pull it off? The sound wasn’t black, wasn’t white, it was BOTH. Or neither. Whatever. It was totally new. And brilliant. So danceable. And … really nasty. I loved, loved, loved it.

From then on, I bought every Prince album the day of its release, scoured record stores for unreleased and bootleg tracks, followed each concert tour. I saw 1984’s PURPLE RAIN show in Prince’s hometown of Minneapolis — on Christmas Eve.

So imagine my groupie heart in 1989, when I opened PEOPLE Magazine to find a picture of Prince, coming out of M. BUTTERFLY, my Broadway show! Prince goes to Broadway? Who knew? He saw my play! Did he like it? How come no one told me? I could’ve been there! I could had like a … casual conversation with him. “Hey, Prince, how ya doin’?” Do people actually call him “Prince?”

Four years later, in 1993, I began hearing through my agents that Prince was interested in meeting with me. To talk about an idea for a stage musical.  Read more...

24 Comments on Working with Prince

My Worst Career Mistakes: Part Three (My Lunch With Neil)

  • April 22, 2010 12:00 am

DHH

David Henry Hwang is a playwright who has been producing plays, musicals and operas for three decades. He won the Tony Award for his play M. BUTTERFLY and also writes for movies and television. This is the third blog where David opens up about his worst career moves and unleashes his Asian Shame. Read parts 1 and 2 here and here.

Sometimes, you feel like you must have made a terrible mistake, without knowing what you should have done differently. Such was the case regarding an afternoon I spent with the great Irish film director Neil Jordan.

First, some back story: I remain to this day best-known as the author of a 1988 play called M. BUTTERFLY, which was loosely based on the true story of a French diplomat who had a twenty year affair with a Chinese actress, only to discover that his lover was a) a spy and b) a man in drag. More than two decades on, it’s easy to imagine that M. BUTTERFLY had always been destined to be a hit. Believe me, it hadn’t.  Read more...

14 Comments on My Worst Career Mistakes: Part Three (My Lunch With Neil)

My Worst Career Mistakes: Part Two

  • March 31, 2010 12:24 am

DHH

David Henry Hwang is a playwright who has been producing plays, musicals and operas for three decades. He won the Tony Award for his play M. BUTTERFLY and also writes for movies and television. This is the second blog where David opens up about his worst career moves and unleashes his Asian Shame.

If you accept the theory that many Asian cultures hit upon Shame as a means of societal control, then you have to hand it to our ancestors. Shame is not only a powerful emotion, it is also incredibly versatile. In my previous blog, I wrote about the most obvious, garden-variety Shame: the kind derived from having betrayed one’s own ideals, and acted in a manner which is immoral, unprincipled or just plain stupid. In my case, this involved penning the 2001 turkey THE LOST EMPIRE. (I have since seen an interview with BATTLEFIELD EARTH screenwriter J.D. Shapiro, apologizing for his turkey. I hope this isn’t shaping up into a trend, because screenwriters complaining about the films made from their movies could rapidly exhaust the capacity of most industrial internet servers.)

Another kind of Shame occurs when one sets out to accomplish a goal which is not inherently shameful, but fails to achieve it. In my case, this experience was compounded by my feeling that I failed to satisfy, or even connect with, one of the most beloved of Asian American actors.

WORKING WITH PAT MORITA

 Read more...

25 Comments on My Worst Career Mistakes: Part Two

My Worst Career Mistakes: Part One

  • March 22, 2010 12:13 am

DHH

David Henry Hwang is a playwright who has been producing plays, musicals and operas for three decades. He won the Tony Award for his play M. BUTTERFLY and also writes for movies and television. This is the first of (hopefully) a series of blogs where David will open up about his worst career moves and unleash his Asian Shame.

She may not have been the first to say it, but I always attribute this quote to Ann Harada, the sensational actress who created the role of “Christmas Eve” in AVENUE Q on Broadway: “Jews may have guilt, but we Asians have Shame!” Though I’ve been fortunate to have enjoyed a long career as a writer, with my share of successes, I feel compelled to reveal the episodes of my professional life that have left me feeling most Ashamed. In fact, I’m going to post them on the internet, to experience Public Shame.

THE LOST EMPIRE

I am SO sorry (kowtow, kowtow, slap-own-face) for having written this 2001 NBC miniseries and inflicting it upon the world. For this crime, I really do deserve to be left stranded on a desert island with Frank Chin.  Read more...

27 Comments on My Worst Career Mistakes: Part One