What will two Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning playwrights have to say to each other in a room full of critics about creating drama based on real-life characters and events?
Tony Award winning playwright David Henry Hwang ("Soft Power"), playwright Jeremy O. Harris ("Slave Play"), culture critic Soraya Nadia McDonald, playwright Nambi E. Kelley ("Native Son") and playwright Leah Nanako Winkler ("God Said") will speak on "writing with cultural awareness."
hese 10 newly-opened Off-Broadway shows are worth looking into.
While many new Broadway shows have opened and will continue to open through the end of the fall, this is also an especially bountiful time for Off-Broadway, with some of the most well-known not-for-profit companies presenting ambitious and diverse productions.
Below are 10 newly-opened Off-Broadway shows that are worth looking into, including three being produced just by the Public Theater.
‘Soft Power’
“The King and I” gets mixed up with China and Hillary Clinton in David Henry Hwang (“M. Butterfly”) and Jeanine Tesori’s (“Fun Home”) wild new musical in which an Asian-American playwright is asked to write a Broadway musical for Shanghai. Public Theater, 425 Lafayette St., publictheater.org. Through Nov. 17.
While David Henry Hwang appreciated the acclaim that came with being the first Asian-American playwright to have a show produced on Broadway, with M Butterfly in 1988, looking back, he says it put him in a difficult position.
“There are obviously great things about getting to lead some kind of breakthrough or being the first,” Hwang says. “But the downside is that there’s an impossible set of expectations that you’re then expected to carry, too. If there’s only one Asian-American or Native American playwright, it’s like that person is expected to speak for the entire community. It’s just not possible for any one individual to speak for the whole of an ethnic group, a racial group, a community, a nation… anything.”
On October 18, 2019, Theatre Forward, a non-profit arts organization based in New York City, held an evening of Creative Conversation & Cocktails with Special Guests David Henry Hwang, Tony-winning playwright of M. Butterfly, Author of Soft Power, Center Theatre Group/Public Theater, and Douglas C. Baker, Producing Director, Center Theatre Group, Los Angeles.
With so much great theater in New York City, you might need a little help deciding what to see this week. We've got you covered!
Here you'll find a list of standout shows that our TheaterMania critics consider especially worth your time. They're all top productions that you definitely won't want to miss.
Soft Power celebrated its off-Broadway opening last night at the Public Theater where the production began performances on September 24. Take a look below at photos from the evening's celebration.
The Tony Award-winning playwright David Henry Hwang has a conflicted relationship with The King and I: enamored by its music, troubled by its exoticization and yellowface past. Soft Power, his newest musical running through Nov. 17 at New York City’s Public Theater, is his attempt to confront the musical’s contradictions and bring it into a new era. With music by fellow Tony winner Jeanine Tesori, Soft Power emulates the musical grandeur of The King and I, but also flips its racial politics on their head by depicting a Chinese man who comes to America and falls in love with a white woman—namely, Hillary Clinton.
The New York premiere of Soft Power will now play its final performance at the Public Theater on November 17, 2019.
The Public Theater has announced a second 1-week extension for its current New York premiere of Soft Power, which features a book and lyrics by David Henry Hwang, music and additional lyrics by Jeanine Tesori and is directed by Leigh Silverman. Previews began at the Public's Newman Theater on September 24, ahead of an official opening on October 15. The limited engagement was originally scheduled to run through November 3, 2019, before an initial extension to November 10, and will now play its final performance on November 17, 2019.
Constance Wu came to the new musical Soft Power at The Public Theater last night. She posed backstage with the cast, along with her guests, Thea Brooks and Mia Katigbak.
SOFT POWER is now running through Sunday, November 10 in The Public's Newman Theater. The new musical has a play and lyrics by Tony Award winner David Henry Hwang, music and additional lyrics by Tony Award winner Jeanine Tesori, choreography by Tony nominee Sam Pinkleton, and is directed by Tony nominee Leigh Silverman.
Playwright David Henry Hwang's new play "Soft Power" takes a hard look at the state of American democracy through the lens of Chinese cultural influence. The play asks: Is it worth fighting for?
The White Plains Performing Arts Center (WPPAC) is proud to announce the cast for Elton John & Tim Rice’s AIDA, playing October 11-27, 2019. Winner of four Tony® Awards, Elton John & Tim Rice’s AIDA is an epic tale of love, loyalty and betrayal, with an exhilarating Tony and Grammy Award-winning score by Elton John & Tim Rice.
Tony Award winning playwright David Henry Hwang and actor Alyse Alan Louis join Frank DiLella in studio to talk about their new “musical within a play” “Soft Power,” which features Louis playing a fictionalized version of Hillary Clinton.
The cast of Soft Power in rehearsal. Photo: Jenny Anderson
An interloper arrives in a nation with some backward ideas, meets a political figure with a lot of power, and convinces them to modernize a bit and change their ways — that’s the formula for many classic tales about European expansion, from Rudyard Kipling up through Seven Years in Tibet, often with a bit of cheery music thrown in, à la The King and I. But it’s also the formula that playwright David Henry Hwang and composer Jeanine Tesori are working with in their “play with a musical” Soft Power, though with the typical power dynamics reversed.
Jeanine Tesori and David Henry Hwang
The Tony Award winners create a musical within a play for the Public Theater production of their Soft Power Off-Broadway.
It often happens that real-life events will steer a new work in development, in unexpected directions. In the case of Soft Power, the new musical-within-a-play co-written by Tony winners David Henry Hwang and Jeanine Tesori, two major events are worth nothing: in late 2015, Hwang was stabbed in the neck while walking home with groceries in Brooklyn, and the 2016 U.S. Presidential election.
The original idea behind Soft Power, directed by Leigh Silverman at the Public Theater following two hit West Coast runs, was a “parallel King and I” in which a Chinese executive becomes an advisor to President Hillary Clinton; Hwang’s impulse, from the beginning, was to subvert the white-savior trope at the heart of such stories. Following the election, however, the show became an exploration of America’s current place in the world.
Soft Power, a new musical-within-a-play featuring a book and lyrics by Tony winner David Henry Hwang and music and additional lyrics by Tony winner Jeanine Tesori, is now in performances at the Public Theater. Take a look at brand-new production photos below.
“Soft Power”
Previews begin Sept. 24; opens Oct. 15 at The Public Theater
Press notes call this musical “a fever dream of American politics,” replete with Hillary Clinton, the tenets of democracy, and a predominantly Asian-American cast.
Silver Spring Stage has programmed a tantalizing year of contemporary classics—among them Sweat by Lynn Nottage, Yellow Face by David Henry Hwang, and Perfect Arrangement by Topher Payne. Kicking off its season is the The Book Club Play by DC’s own comic genius Karen Zacarías, the only local on American Theatre magazine’s list of most-produced playwrights.
VAN WERT — Van Wert High School Theatre Department has announced its 2019-2020 season.
The fall play production, Sherlock Holmes, will be performed at the Niswonger Performing Arts Center on Friday, Nov. 22 and Saturday, Nov. 23 at 7 p.m. Rehearsals have begun and students are looking forward to sharing the classic tales of detective Sherlock Holmes and partner Dr. Watson. This play, originally written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and adapted by Tim Kelly, is set in the 1890s and is full of suspense and mystery. General admission tickets ($6) will be available from cast and crew members, the NPAC box office, and at the door. Sherlock Holmes is produced with special arrangement by Pioneer Drama Service, Inc. in Englewood, Colorado.
The musical-within-a-play starts previews at The Public Theater with a cast including Conrad Ricamora and Francis Jue.
The Off-Broadway premiere of Soft Power, a new musical-within-a-play co-written by Tony winners David Henry Hwang (M. Butterfly) and Jeanine Tesori (Caroline, or Change), begins performances at The Public Theater September 24 ahead of an October 15 opening.
Soft Power rewinds recent political history and plays it back, a century later, through the Chinese lens of a future East-meets-West musical. The recently extended show, scheduled through November 10, is helmed by Tony-nominated director Leigh Silverman (Violet) with choreography by Tony nominee Sam Pinkleton (Natasha, Pierre, & the Great Comet of 1812).
David Henry Hwang on the red carpet.
Last night was the American Theatre Wing's 2019 Gala, celebrating Jonathan Larson!
The evening's entertainment featured the work of composers and lyricists who have been the recipients of the Jonathan Larson Grants, including Obie Award winner Kirsten Childs, Tony Award nominee Joe Iconis, Michael R. Jackson, Academy Award, Grammy Award, Golden Globe Award, and Tony Award winners Benj Pasek & Justin Paul, Shaina Taub, and, of course, Pulitzer Prize and three-time Tony Award winner Jonathan Larson. Many of the artists made appearances to speak about their role in the Larson Legacy.
