Events
Sir Run Run Shaw Distinguished Visiting Scholar Lecture 2024/25
8 Apr 2025
5:00 p.m.
Lecture Theatre, Shaw College,
The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Professor David Henry Hwang
Professor, Theatre, School of the Arts, Columbia University in the City of New York
David Henry Hwang’s stage works include the plays M. Butterfly, Yellow Face, Golden Child, Chinglish, and The Dance and the Railroad, as well as the musicals Soft Power, Flower Drum Song, and Disney’s Broadway and international hits Aida and Tarzan. The Broadway revival of Yellow Face, starring Daniel Dae Kim, enjoyed a critically-acclaimed limited run in Fall 2024, and will be broadcast in Spring 2025 on PBS’ Great Performances. Called America’s most-produced living opera librettist by Opera News, Hwang has written thirteen operas. Ainadamar, with music by Osvaldo Golijov, made its Metropolitan Opera debut in Fall 2024 and The Monkey King, with music by Huang Ruo, will premiere at San Francisco Opera in November 2025. Hwang’s screenplays include David Cronenberg’s M. Butterfly, starring Jeremy Irons, and he is currently penning an Anna May Wong biopic to star Gemma Chan as well as a musical feature film for Paramount Pictures. Hwang co-wrote the Gold Record “Solo” with the late pop music icon Prince and was a Writer/Consulting Producer for the Golden Globe-winning television series The Affair from 2015-2019. He is creating a new television show, Billion Dollar Whale, for SK. Hwang is a Tony Award winner and three-time nominee, a Grammy Award winner and two-time nominee, a three-time OBIE Award winner, and a three-time Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama. A professor at Columbia University School of the Arts, he was inducted into the Theatre Hall of Fame in 2018 and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2021.
Online Registration : https://bit.ly/3Xu5CX5
Enquiries (852)39437356 / kannachan@cuhk.edu.hk
Playwright, Screenwriter, and Librettist David Henry Hwang will illuminate the history and current state of Broadway and the American Theatre by sharing the journey of his own 45-year career. How has theatre managed to survive, even thrive, through the proliferation of alternate mediums able to reach larger audiences? How can an art form sometimes considered niche or elitist help to provoke social commentary and inspire change? How do the economics of Broadway both encourage and hinder the production of adventurous plays and musicals, and might the U.S.’s current rightward lurch affect this? Interspersed with anecdotes from Broadway and readings of excerpts from his own work, Prof. Hwang will encourage artists, teachers, cultural workers, and anyone interested in the theatre to imagine the worlds they want to see.
