San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Theater
David Henry Hwang’s “Soft Power” is coming to the Curran. .
Early in David Henry Hwang’s prolific career, the theater community started referring to him as the most famous Chinese American playwright. Over the decades Hwang has had mixed feelings about his anointment.
“At this point I think it is just true. I think everybody who is fortunate enough to have a career gets labeled in one way or another, and I do write a lot about Asian American stuff, so that is fair. But ‘label’ has evolved into a term more desirable, which is branding, and I am well branded,” he said recently with a laugh. Much as August Wilson wrote about African Americans, Hwang’s plays often cast a light on Asian American lives. In “FOB” he depicts the acrimony between established Asian Americans and those “fresh off the boat.” “The Dance and the Railroad” looks at the plight of coolie laborers in California in the 19th century, and “Family Devotions” takes on the effect of Western religion on a Chinese family.
But the 60-year-old playwright has shown a curiosity about all manner of subjects over the years. His best-known play, “M Butterfly,” which won a Tony Award and was turned into a movie, details a 20-year romantic relationship between a French diplomat and a male Chinese opera singer who somehow convinces his lover that he is a woman.
With his new show, “Soft Power,” Hwang has really spread his wings. Part play and part musical — he calls it
Soft Power June 20-July 8 at the Curran. $29-$175. https:// sfcurran.com
“a play with a musical” — it opened to critical acclaim in Los Angeles and lands at the Curran June 20-July 8 on its journey to Broadway. It tells a complicated story. The Los Angeles Times critic described himself as “slightly dizzy” from his attempt at a synopsis.
Hwang begins by explaining the origins of his title. It refers to one kind of international power which stems from artistic and cultural influences, as opposed to hard power which would be military and other shows of physical strength. “America has a lot of soft power while China doesn’t but is trying to gain it.”
His imagination was sparked after watching the revival of “The King and I” at Lincoln Center in New York. “I always loved this musical but as I have gotten older I became aware of aspects of it that are questionable such as whether an English woman would come to Siam to teach the king how to run his country,” he said.
“That trope is pretty recurrent in a lot of western work. So I wondered how one might start to flip it on his head. I got the idea for a play where we learn of a glancing encounter between a Chinese national and an American leader. Several decades in the future that incident has been mythologized in Chinese culture and becomes the source material for a beloved East-West musical in China.”
The second part of “Soft Power” consists of showing that musical in all its glory including a dancing-singing Hillary Clinton and a chorus made up of Chinese performers in whiteface.
“It is a complicated concept,” Hwang acknowledges, “because the musical supposedly is written 50 years from now by a Chinese author. It is written in the future, but it is set in our present. The show assumes that China has become the dominant power 50 years down the road, and that they therefore control the narrative. China stepped into the dominant role when America collapses after the 2016 election.”
Asked whether the storyline was inspired by his view of ultimate events, Hwang laughed. “My initial thought was that the American leader encountered by the Chinese national was going to be Hillary Clinton, who I assumed would be president. It would sort of be a parallel to the ‘King and I.’ Obviously that didn’t happen.
“But the morning after the election I woke up and thought, ‘Personally, this is not good for the country, but it could be really good for our musical.’ You see America withdrawing from a lot of international commitments and turning inward, so it is possible that China would step in earlier than I imagined when I first conceived of the play.”
Hwang brought in Jeanine Tesori, the Tony award-winning composer for “Fun House,” to do the music. But with his musical background, Hwang was involved in that aspect of the show as well.
“I started playing violin at 7. I played classical music through high school. I am a decent classical violinist. It was
great in college when I learned to improvise and became a jazz violinist. I think I am pretty good. In recent years I have even sat in with a fusion band,” said Hwang, whose spiky, wayward hair would fit right in.
“My association with music now has to do with work on musicals or operas. I am considered the most produced living American opera librettist, and maybe the most strange as well,” Hwang said. A few days following the opening of “Soft Power” he traveled to St. Louis to observe rehearsals of his new opera “An American Soldier,” a commission from the Opera Theatre of St. Louis. (The San Francisco Opera premiered his “Dream of the Red Chamber” in 2016.)
Working on “Soft Power” was such a positive experience that Hwang definitely hopes to tackle another original musical, though probably not as his next endeavor.
“I am not sure what I will do next,” he said. “I have two things in the back of my mind that I want to do before my career is over.”
Ruthe Stein is The San Francisco Chronicle’s senior movie correspondent.