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David Henry Hwang is best known as the author of
M. Butterfly, which won a 1988 Tony Award and was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize, and he has written the Obie Award–winners
Golden Child and
FOB, as well as
Family Devotions, Sound and Beauty, Rich Relations, and a revised version of
Flower Drum Song. His
Yellow Face won a 2008 Obie Award and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist.
Understanding David Henry Hwang is a critical study of Hwang's playwriting process as well as the role of identity in each one of Hwang's major theatrical works. A first-generation Asian American, Hwang intrinsically understands the complications surrounding the competing attractiveness of an American identity with its freedoms in contrast to the importance of a cultural and ethnic identity connected to another society.
William C. Boles examines Hwang's plays by exploring the perplexing struggles surrounding Asian and Asian American stereotypes, values, and identity. Boles argues that Hwang deliberately uses stereotypes in order to subvert them, while at other times he embraces the dual complexity of ethnicity when it is tied to national identity and ethnic history. In addition to the individual questions of identity as they pertain to ethnicity, Boles discusses how Hwang's plays explore identity issues of gender, religion, profession, and sexuality. The volume concludes with a treatment of
Chinglish, both in the context of rising Chinese economic prominence and Hwang's previous work.
Hwang has written ten short plays including
The Dance and the Railroad, five screenplays, and many librettos for musical theatre. The recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim and Rockefeller foundations, Hwang was appointed by Bill Clinton to the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities.
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William C. Boles is a professor of English at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida, USA, and the author of
The Argumentative Theatre of Joe Penhall. He has published essays on Martin McDonagh, Wendy Wasserstein, Shelagh Delaney, and Samuel Beckett.
Riassunto
A critical study of the playwright s process and the role of identity in each major theatrical work
