Words matter. These are the best David Henry Hwang Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
I’m interested in internationalism. It’s the new multiculturalism. How we deal with each other isn’t sufficient any more. It’s about time we examine how we interact with the rest of the world we live in.
‘Yellow Face’ marks my summation of multiculturalism.
For a long time, it was hard for me to get my work done in Chicago. Silk Road gave me opportunities to do shows like ‘Golden Child’ – shows that nobody else seemed interested in. And they bring an artistic integrity to the work that matches anything you’ll find at a bigger theatre.
With theatre, we all agree to suspend our disbelief about so many things, but not about race. It’s totally OK to have one actor playing five roles – people are willing to believe that. But they won’t believe it if there’s a black or an Asian kid who has white parents. What does that say about us?
There’s something about China and its rush to capitalism that I find confusing. At the same time, we live in an America where capitalists oppose any government interference with free markets, while in China you have a very controlled, state-planned market where economic growth is better than ours.
I knew I was Chinese, but growing up, it never occurred to me that that had any particular implication or that it should differentiate me in any way. I thought it was a minor detail, like having red hair.
I define the American dream as the ability to imagine a way that you want your life to turn out, and have a reasonable hope that you can achieve that.
If I do a play, it’s my vision, and everybody else is working on the production to support that. If I do an opera, I feel like part of my job is to support that composer, to try and create something that allows the composer to do his or her best work. In movies, it’s usually the director.
I am almost famous in China, because I have that Broadway cachet.
I think that plays are probably the most personal, because it’s just me in charge, but sometimes it’s just really – I think that there’s honor in being a good artist, and there’s honor in being a good ‘craftsperson.’
I visited a new cultural center in Shanghai in 2005 that was pretty much perfect, except for the really badly translated Chinglish signs: a handicapped restroom that said ‘Deformed Man’s Toilet,’ that kind of thing.
My new play ‘Chinglish,’ which will go to Broadway, is about a white American businessman who goes to a provincial capital in China, hoping to make a deal there. It’s bilingual. And it’s about trying to communicate across language and cultural barriers.
You aren’t allowed to ask at auditions, legally, a person’s race.
I’ve studied Chinese in college, but basically, I’m not bilingual.
There is something very unique in American iconography about this notion of the pursuit of happiness.
