David Henry Hwang
David Henry Hwang ( born August 11, 1957 in Los Angeles ) is an American writer. He is regarded as the most important Asian American ( Sino-American ) playwright of the country.
Life and work
David Henry Hwang, son of a banker and a piano professor, has at Stanford University (until 1979 ) and Yale University (1980, 1981) studied. Already at Stanford, where his fellow students Sam Shepard and Maria Irene Fornes were, he began writing stage plays.
Many of Hwang's work will address the role of Chinese and other Asian- Americans -born in the modern American life. His debut, the award winning with a Obie Award piece " FOB " has the contradictions and conflicts between long-established Chinese Americans and new immigrants to the topic. The theater was built in the O'Neill Playwrights Center ( New London (Connecticut) ) was founded in 1981 and premiered in Joseph Papp 's Public Theatre in New York City. Papp then produced four more pieces of Hwang, including "The Dance and the Railroad ," the story of a former star of Chinese opera, which has to earn his living as a coolie at the end of the 19th century. "Family Devotions " is a dark comedy about the impact of western religion on the life of a Chinese family. "Sound and Beauty" is the total titles of two of resettled in Japan -act play.
In Hwang's next drama - "Rich Relations" - were the first non-Asian characters in the center. The piece was premiered at Second Stage Theatre in New York and served Hwang - although it was not a success - in preparation for his most famous work, " M. Butterfly ". " M. Butterfly " (1990 ), an intelligent dismantling of Puccini's opera" Madama Butterfly ", loosely based on news reports about the relationships of a French diplomat, Bernard Boursicot, and Shi Pei Pu, a singer of Chinese opera, of his lover Boursicot supposedly twenty years deceived about his gender. The piece was premiered in 1988 on Broadway and carried Hwang next to a nomination for the Pulitzer Prize Tony Award, the Drama Desk Award, the John Gassner Award and the Outer Critics Circle Award. An even wider audience was aware of the substance in 1993 in the film version of David Cronenberg ( with Jeremy Irons and John Lone).
The success of " M. Butterfly " Hwang encouraged to develop his interests in many directions, and he began to work among other things, opera, television and musicals. In the 1990s, he continued to write for the stage, including minor works for the famous Actors Theatre of Louisville and his second Broadway play, " Golden Child ", which won the 1997 Obie Award and was nominated for a Tony Award.
In the 21st century, Hwang continued his work in all areas of Bühnenschriftstellerei continued and brought his third Broadway success on the stage: a radically new version of Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein and Joseph Fields musical " Flower Drum Song." Based on the novel by CY Lee, which tells the story of the conflict adaptation of living in San Francisco Chinese family.
David Henry Hwang married in 1985, the artist Ophelia Chong YM. After the divorce, he married actress Kathryn Layng, with whom he has two children, Noah David and Eva Veanne. Hwang lives with his family in New York City.
Prices
David Henry Hwang has been awarded numerous prizes and grants, including grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the New York State Council on the Arts and the Pew Charitable Trusts. Among the institutions that have awarded him a prize, include the Asian American Legal Defense & Education Fund, the Association for Asian Pacific American Artists, the Museum of Chinese in the Americas, the East West Players, the Organization of Chinese Americans, the Media Action Network for Asian Americans, the Center for migration Studies, the Asian American Resource Workshop, the China Institute and the New York Foundation for the Arts.
1994 Hwang was appointed by President Bill Clinton to the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities. In 1998, the oldest Asian American theater, the "East West Players ", their new main stage named " David Henry Hwang Theatre".