The Legacy Playwrights Initiative Announces Inaugural Winners

NEW YORK CITY: The Legacy Playwrights Initiative has announced the recipients of the inaugural Legacy Playwrights Initiative Awards, which aims to honor and advocate for elder playwrights who have fallen out of the public eye. The winners are Ed Bullins, Constance Congdon, and Philip Kan Gotanda.

The playwrights will be recognized at the Dramatists Guild Foundation “Write in the Dark” virtual benefit on December 21, 2020, featuring special guests Lou Bellamy, Oskar Eustis, David Henry Hwang, Tony Kushner, Phylicia Rashad, and Paula Vogel.

The Legacy Playwrights Initiative was founded by Anne Cattaneo (Lincoln Center Theater), Benita Hofstetter Koman (formerly of the Roy Cockrum Foundation), Todd London (Dramatists Guild), and Rachel Routh (Dramatists Guild Foundation), with fiscal sponsorship from the Dramatists Guild Foundation and in partnership with the Dramatists Guild of America.

Read more at American Theatre

BWW Blog: Why Soft Power is Number One on My Spotify Wrapped

When I first sat down at The Public Theater over a year ago to watch Soft Power, I didn't know what to expect- I just knew that one of my favorite playwrights David Henry Hwang had created a musical with Jeanine Tesori and an almost entirely Asian cast, which I'm all for. I didn't know that Soft Power would become one of my favorite musicals.

Soft Power is a fever dream musical that flips typical Eurocentric musical standards on its' head.

Read more at Broadway World

Dramatists Guild Foundation Presents Write in the Dark

The Dramatists Guild Foundation presents a virtual COVID-19 relief benefit, titled Write in the Dark, December 21 at 7 PM ET. Among those participating are writers Michael R. Jackson, Heidi Schreck, Lin-Manuel Miranda, and Stephen Sondheim, in a streaming event spotlighting how writers have captured the cultural and societal zeitgeist in 2020.

In addition to their COVID-19 relief efforts, the DGF celebrates playwrights Ed Bullins, Constance Congdon, and Philip KanGotanda with the inaugural Legacy Playwrights Initiative Award. The awards are presented by Lou Bellamy, Oskar Eustis, David Henry Hwang, Phylicia Rashad, and Paula Vogel.

Read more at Playbill

It’s been a tough year. Here’s what we listened to, watched and read to get through it.

The Opinions staff asked our columnists to share one book, TV show, movie, album, video game or other piece of culture, broadly defined, that had a big impact on them this year. Here’s what they recommended, and why.

I’ve listened to the cast recording “Soft Power,” a wickedly funny musical satire by David Henry Hwang and Jeanine Tesori, frequently since its release this spring. The show is an inversion of “The King and I,” in which the wise foreign visitor is a Chinese man advising an American leader about how to civilize her barbarous, backward democracy. Originally, I craved this album because I wanted to savor all the lyrics to “Good Guy With a Gun,” a rootin'-tootin’ celebration of America’s firearms obsession; but in the weeks leading up to the November election, I listened nonstop to the show’s torch song to an emotionally abusive, fickle lover (“Democracy”). — Catherine Rampell

Read more at Washington Post

1000 Airplanes on the Roof: The Encounter

“1000 Airplanes on the Roof” is a “science fiction music drama” by Glass and David Henry Hwang that follows its protagonist M’s experiences of alien life forms, and the messages these visitations bring. The video, directed by Mickalene Thomas, certainly seems to embrace the disorientating and kaleidoscopic effect an alien visitation must have. Known for her work as a painter who regularly embraces and plays with rhinestones, acrylic, and enamel, Thomas has also explored all kinds of multi-media work, including photography, sculpture, installation, and video art, including a design collaboration with Solange. In this video, it is that core textural work we are most drawn to.

Read more at Opera Wire

Legacy Playwrights Initiative Award

BROADWAY WORLD -- Esteemed American Playwrights Ed Bullins, Constance Congdon and Philip Kan Gotanda have been announced as the inaugural recipients of the Legacy Playwrights Initiative Awards. The winners will be recognized by their friends and peers, including Lou Bellamy, Oskar Eustis, David Henry Hwang, Tony Kushner, Phylicia Rashad and Paula Vogel, at the Dramatists Guild Foundation “Write in the Dark” virtual benefit on December 21, 2020.

The industry-wide Legacy Playwrights Initiative is a process of rediscovery and advocacy for important elder playwrights whose writing has fallen out of the public eye.

Read more at San Francisco State University

M Butterfly one of the 20 Best Spy Movies Of All The Time

Spy movies or detective films unlike other genres are quite labyrinthine. Unlike other genre are definitely not restricted to movies with straight out constructed protagonist -antagonist storylines and plots. It branches out to, not just fantasy-trails but also touches real-life characters.

No denial, James bond definitely rules the top of lists for most of us here, and with that note, we have made an attempt to reckon a list of movies for you guys. Also to spice up the spy films binger in you, we are here to take you on a bullet ride, so hold on tight to the edge of your seat.

David Cronenberg found an alternate point on his vocation long investigation of how bodies shape character (and the other way around) by adjusting David Henry Hwang’s reality-based play M Butterfly about a French negotiator (Jeremy Irons) who directs a years-in length undertaking with Peking drama vocalist Song Liling (John Lone) without appearing to perceive that Song was keeping an eye on him — or that Song was a man.

Read more at Gizmo Story

#ENOUGH: PLAYS TO END GUN VIOLENCE to Premiere Digitally Next Week

Broadway On Demand will present #ENOUGH: Plays to End Gun Violence, a ground-breaking production of this year's seven selected 10-minute plays confronting gun violence, written and submitted by high school students from across the country.

Selected by award-winning playwrights Lauren Gunderson, David Henry Hwang, Tarell Alvin McCraney, Robert Schenkkan, and Karen Zacarías, these seven powerful short plays written and performed by teens nationwide confront gun violence through the lenses of race, police brutality, community violence, school shootings, and American mythology. The 2020 play selections include Ms. Martin's Malaise by Adelaide Fisher, Guns In Dragonland by Eislinn Gracen, Togetha by Azya Lyons, Malcolm by Debkanya Mitra, Ghost Gun by Olivia Ridley, Hullabaloo by Sarah Schecter and Loaded Language by Elizabeth Shannon.

Read more at Broadway World

AATE and the Dramatist Guild Foundation Co-Host Playwrighting Symposium With David Henry Hwang

“Everyone’s a Playwright: Writing as a Teaching Tool and Expressive Engine” will take place On February 6th and 7th.

This two-day symposium will present a keynote led by playwright, librettist, screenwriter, and theater professor David Henry Hwang. Hwang is a Tony Award winner and three-time nominee, a three-time OBIE Award winner, and a three-time Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He is also the most-produced living American opera librettist, whose works have been honored with two Grammy Awards, co-wrote the Gold Record Solo with the late pop icon Prince, and worked from 2015-2019 as a Writer/Consulting Producer for the Golden Globe-winning television series The Affair.

Read more at Broadway World

#ENOUGH: Plays to End Gun Violence Nationwide Reading Premieres in Multiple Cities

#ENOUGH: Plays to End Gun Violence will premiere on December 14, 2020.

Mildred's Umbrella Theater Company has announced its participation in the Nationwide Reading of the seven winning plays of #ENOUGH: Plays to End Gun Violence, a national short play competition for middle and high school students. On December 14, 2020 at 7pm -- the 8-year remembrance of the shootings at Sandy Hook -- the winning titles will be performed at Mildred's Umbrella and over 50 other theatres and schools across the country and abroad.

A panel of nationally-recognized dramatists - Lauren Gunderson, Academy Award winner Tarell Alvin McCraney, Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Schenkkan, Tony Award winner David Henry Hwang, and Karen Zacarías - selected the plays out of 184 submissions from twenty-three states and three countries in #ENOUGH's call for teens to write 10-minute plays that confront the issue of gun violence.

Read more at Broadway World

Columbia University School of Art Faculty and Alumni Nominated for 2021 Grammy Awards

Music’s biggest night will feature the works of many Columbia faculty and alumni. The Recording Academy announced the 63rd Annual Grammy Award nominations last week, which recognize annual achievements in the music industry.

Soft Power by Associate Professor David Henry Hwang and Barnard alumna Jeanine Tesori ’83 is nominated in the Best Musical Theater Album category for their Off-Broadway high concept musical. Hwang and Tesori share the nomination as Lyricist and Lyricist and Composer respectively. The show was also nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and 11 Drama Desk Award nominations. Hwang’s musical includes a self titled character who is attacked and stabbed while walking on the streets of Brooklyn. After being rushed to the hospital, the character hallucinates a Chinese musical based on current events circulating through the media. The musical is a fantasia of sorts, with a version of the United States of America where everyone is blond and brandishes a gun and even includes Hilary Clinton riding on a Big Mac. The Off Broadway production, which played the Public Theatre in 2019, was directed by Adjunct Assistant Professor Leigh Silverman. 

Read more at Columbia University School of Art

Arizona Students Playing Key Roles In #ENOUGH: Plays To End Gun Violence

Nine students from the Tucson area, Mesa and Laveen participating in Arizona Theatre Company's ATCteen program are playing key roles in the digital premiere of seven winning plays from #ENOUGH: Plays to End Gun Violence, a national short play competition for middle and high school students.

Arizona Theatre Company (ATC) is one of five companies across the nation collaborating in the program. The winning plays will be available on the streaming platform Broadway on Demand (BOD) beginning Dec. 14, the eight-year remembrance of the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012. The digital premieres can be viewed for free. Registration is required at broadwayondemand.com.

ATCteen students will perform a staged reading of Debkanya Mitra's play, Malcolm. Malcolm tells the story of a Black folk musician whose quest through the Eastern Seaboard to find himself was violently interrupted and paints an evocative picture of the connection shared among strangers through a single life.

A panel of nationally-recognized dramatists - Lauren Gunderson, America's most produced living playwright (Silent Sky, The Heath); Academy Award winner Tarell Alvin McCraney, who the Oscar for Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay for Moonlight; Tony Award winner David Henry Hwang, who won the Tony Award for Best Play for M. Butterfly; and Karen Zacariís (Native Gardens), winner of ATC's National Latinx Playwright Award -- selected the plays out of 184 submissions from 23 states and three countries in #ENOUGH's call for teens to write 10-minute plays that confront the issue of gun violence.

Read more at Broadway World

Soft Power, Jagged Little Pill, American Utopia & More Earn Grammy Nominations

Nominations were announced on November 24 for the 63rd annual Grammy Awards. The Tony-nominated musical Jagged Little Pill, American Utopia, Soft Power, Little Shop of Horrors, Amélie and The Prince of Egypt are in the running for Best Musical Theater Album, with credits as follows:

Soft Power
Francis Jue, Austin Ku, Alyse Alan Louis and Conrad Ricamora, principal soloists; Matt Stine, producer (David Henry Hwang, lyricist; Jeanine Tesori, composer and lyricist).

Amélie
Audrey Brisson, Chris Jared, Caolan McCarthy and Jez Unwin, principal soloists; Michael Fentimen, Sean Patrick Flahaven, Barnaby Race & Nathan Tysen, producers (Nathan Tysen, lyricist; Daniel Messe, composer and lyricist) 

American Utopia
David Byrne, principal soloist; David Byrne, producer (David Byrne, composer and lyricist) 

Jagged Little Pill
Kathryn Gallagher, Celia Rose Gooding, Lauren Patten and Elizabeth Stanley, principal soloists; Neal Avron, Pete Ganbarg, Tom Kitt, Michael Parker, Craig Rosen and Vivek J. Tiwary, producers (Glen Ballard and Alanis Morissette, lyricists) 

Little Shop of Horrors
Tammy Blanchard, Jonathan Groff and Tom Alan Robbins, principal soloists; Will Van Dyke, Michael Mayer, Alan Menken and Frank Wolf, producers (Alan Menken, composer; Howard Ashman, lyricist) 

The Prince of Egypt
Christine Allado, Luke Brady, Alexia Khadime and Liam Tamne, principal soloists; Dominick Amendum and Stephen Schwartz, producers (Stephen Schwartz, composer and lyricist) 

Read more at Broadway.com

Malmö Opera to World Premiere Philip Glass’ ‘Circus Days and Nights’

The Malmö Opera has announced a production of Philip Glass’ “Circus Days and Nights,” in collaboration with the circus company Cirkus Cirkör.

The work, which is set to world premiere on May 29, 2021, will open in Malmö before heading on tour throughout Asia, the United States, and Europe. The libretto is by David Henry Hwang and Tilde Björfors; Björfors will also direct the production.

Read more at Operawire

Soft Power, Little Shop of Horrors, Jagged Little Pill, More Earn 2021 Grammy Nominations

A record six cast recordings are up for Best Musical Theater Album at the 63rd annual Grammy Awards.

In most years since the category was first presented in 1959, there have been five nominees; this year marks the first with an expanded lineup of six titles.

Soft Power (Original Off-Broadway Cast Recording)
Principal soloists: Francis Jue, Austin Ku, Alyse Alan Louis, and Conrad Ricamora
Producer: Matt Stine
Lyricist: David Henry Hwang
Composer-lyricist: Jeanine Tesori

Read more at Playbill

Teen Plays Tackling Gun Violence to Stream on Broadway Platform

Seven plays about gun violence will premiere on Broadway on Demand on the anniversary of the Sandy Hook massacre.

NEW YORK CITY: #ENOUGH Plays to End Gun Violence, in partnership with Broadway on Demand, Playscripts, and the Dramatists Guild, has announced the selection of seven plays by teen playwrights for its short-play competition. On Dec. 14, the eight-year anniversary of the shootings at Sandy Hook, the winning titles will premiere on the streaming platform Broadway on Demand and be made available for free for organizations to stage readings locally.

The seven winners are Adelaide Fisher’s Ms. Martin’s Malaise, Eislinn Gracen’s Guns in Dragonland, Azya Lyons’ Togetha, Debkanya Mitra’s Malcolm, Olivia Ridley’s Ghost Gun, Sarah Schecter’s Hullabaloo, and Elizabeth Shannon’s Loaded Language.  In addition a digital premiere on Broadway on Demand, the plays will be published and licensed through Playscripts. The writers will receive guild membership and craft training through the Dramatists Guild’s Young Dramatist Initiative. The selected works were chosen by a jury including Lauren Gunderson, Tarell Alvin McCraney, Robert Schenkkan, David Henry Hwang, and Karen Zacarías, who considered 184 submissions from 23 states.

Read more at American Theatre

David Henry Hwang’s ‘M. Butterfly’ Followup: ‘M. Turkey’

The goal: a comedy about mistaken racial identity inspired by protests over “Miss Saigon.” The result: a backstage farce that never got to opening night.

David Henry Hwang’s “Face Value” arrived on Broadway on March 9, 1993. It left five days later. For Gina Torres, an actress in that production, the news came as a relief. “Because we were pushing that stone uphill for a good long time,” she said.

“Face Value,” Hwang’s follow-up to the Tony Award-winning “M. Butterfly,” was a farce — and not entirely in the ways that Hwang and Jerry Zaks, the play’s director, intended.

In 1990, Hwang, the first Asian-American to win a playwriting Tony, joined members of Actor’s Equity in objecting to the casting of Jonathan Pryce as a Eurasian character in the Broadway production of “Miss Saigon.” Equity rejected the casting.

Read more at New York Times

Ode to a Butterfly: On the Transformative Symbol, Its Failure in ‘Antebellum,’ and Its Power in ‘Possessor Uncut’

Thou winged blossom! liberated thing!
What secret tie binds thee to other flowers
Still held within the garden’s fostering?
Will they too soar with the completed hours,
Take flight and be like thee
Irrevocably free,
Hovering at will o’er their parental bowers?
—“Ode to a Butterfly,” Thomas Wentworth Higginson

The butterfly has long served as a shorthand way of communicating change and growth. The transformative nature of how a caterpillar emerges from a cocoon as a physically different being, now with antennae and wings and totally different colors, has become a symbol in a variety of genres. Think of the play M. Butterfly, and how author David Henry Hwang raises questions about gender performance and sexual desire. 

Read more at Pajiba

David Henry Hwang, Judith Light, David Hyde Pierce, José Rivera added to "In Our America" Concert; Broadway for Biden team

Tony winners Judith Light, David Hyde Pierce, Leslie Uggams, LaChanze, Karen Ziemba, and more Broadway stars have joined Broadway for Biden’s In Our America: A Concert for the Soul of Our Nation lineup. David Henry Hwang, José Rivera, Kate Rigg, Jacob Burns, and Maggie Cassella have joined the writing team.

Also newly added to the lineup are Terence Archie, Tala Ashe, Jeannette Bayardelle, Alex Boniello, Layla Capers, Nikki Renée Daniels, Quentin Earl Darrington, Sheila Kay Davis, Rogelio Douglas Jr., Matt Doyle, Michael Emerson, Celia Rose Gooding, Jin Ha, James Harkness, Ben Harney, William Jackson Harper, Aisha Jackson, Jawan M. Jackson, Marcus Paul James, Isaiah Johnson, Justin Keyes, Hailey Kilgore, Quentin Oliver Lee, John Leguizamo, Telly Leung, Selenis Leyva, Sky Lakota Lynch, Taylor Mac, Sahr Ngaujah, Okieriete Onaodowan, Larry Owens, Fiona Morgan Quinn, Jelani Remy, Conrad Ricamora, Lauren Ridloff, Nicolette Robinson, Dee Roscioli, Walter Russell III, George Salazar, Elizabeth Judd Salinas, Rashidra Scott, Ryan Shaw, Jimmy Smits, Myra Lucretia Taylor, Jayden Theopile, Nasia Thomas, Skye Dakota Turner, Marquise Vilson, Marlon Wayans, Donald Webber Jr., Rebecca Covington Webber, and the casts of Kiss My Aztec and Missing Peace.

Read more at Playbill

#ENOUGH Announces Seven Winning Plays Chosen by Lauren Gunderson, David Henry Hwang and More

#ENOUGH has announced the selection of seven plays by teen playwrights chosen by nationally recognized dramatists Lauren Gunderson, Academy Award winner Tarell Alvin McCraney, Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Schenkkan, Tony Award winner David Henry Hwang, and Karen Zacarías, as the winners of #ENOUGH: Plays to End Gun Violence, a national short play competition for middle and high school students. On December 14, 2020 -- the eight-year remembrance of the shootings at Sandy Hook -- the winning titles will receive their digital premiere on the streaming platform Broadway on Demand and be made available for free for organizations to stage readings locally.

Read more at Broadway World