Magazine columnist Marilyn Vos Savant is 76. Country singer John Conlee is 76. Singer Eric Carmen is 73. Computer scientist and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak is 72. Wrestler-actor Hulk Hogan is 69. Singer Joe Jackson is 68. Playwright David Henry Hwang is 65. Actor Miguel A. Nunez Jr. is 63. Actor Viola Davis is 57. Actor Embeth Davidtz is 57. Actor Duane Martin is 57.
New York Public Library shares world's large archive of theatre recordings in new exhibit /
Playwright David Henry Hwang with actors John Lone and Tzi Ma on the set of The Public Theater production of "The Dance and the Railroad" in 1981. (Martha Swope/Billy Rose Theatre Division)
The world’s largest collection of live theatre recordings turns 50 this year. To celebrate, the New York Public Library, which curates the massive collection, is welcoming guests to its new exhibit called “Focus Center Stage.”
Of the more than 8,000 titles featured in the collection, about 4,500 are recorded productions. Curator Patrick Hoffman says he wishes every production could be taped for the archives, but that it isn’t financially feasible.
“We select what we believe are the outstanding productions on Broadway, off-Broadway,” Hoffman says. “And we’ve also taped in regional theaters over the years, too.”
‘M. Butterfly’ a different spin on the Puccini opera /
“M. Butterfly” turns Puccini on his head.
As beautiful as it is, “Madama Butterfly” presents problems of race, gender and cultural differences. Based on the Tony Award-winning Broadway play, “M. Butterfly” offers a corrective, composer Huang Ruo says.
“There are issues with Puccini’s opera,” Ruo said in a telephone interview from Santa Fe. “Of course, it was written 100 years ago by a composer who had never been to the country.”
In Puccini’s version of this unrequited love story, the naval officer Pinkerton seduces and marries Cio Cio San, a young Japanese geisha with whom he has a child. He subsequently abandons her, marrying an American wife who returns to take the child.
In “M. Butterfly,” a French diplomat falls for a Chinese opera singer who presents him with a son. But it is the diplomat who falls into tragedy.
The butterfly effect /
Song Liling (Kangmin Justin Kim) and René Gallimard (Mark Stone) in M. Butterfly; photo Curtis Brown for the Santa Fe Opera
David Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly was the first play composer Huang Ruo saw in America after arriving here in 1996 to study at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. “I went because I knew Puccini’s opera,” he says, “and because I knew there was an Asian actor in it. I remember it was very shocking, and it struck me deeply.”
Twenty-six years later — and after three earlier collaborations — their operatic version of M. Butterfly will become the Santa Fe Opera’s 18th world premiere when it opens on Saturday, July 30.
Its plot is based on a real-life event. In 1986, a French diplomat and his romantic partner, a Chinese Opera singer, were convicted of spying for China. Their trial received international news coverage when it was revealed that for more than 20 years the diplomat had incorrectly believed the singer, who specialized in female roles, was a woman.
Hwang heard about the news reports at a Los Angeles cocktail party and was convinced it contained stage potential. About a year later, he had the “Aha!” moment that provided the entry point to the play. While driving down Santa Monica Boulevard, he asked himself, “What did the diplomat think he was getting with this Chinese actress?”
'M. Butterfly': The essentials /
Cinese Opera singer Shi Pei Pu in performance
THE PREMIERE
July 30, 2022, at the Santa Fe Opera
THE PEOPLE
René Gallimard: a French diplomat posted to Beijing
Song Liling: a Chinese Opera performer
Manuel Toulon: French ambassador to China
Comrade Chin: People’s Liberation Army member
Marc: Gallimard’s childhood friend
THE PLOT
The action takes place in René Gallimard’s jail cell in Paris, where he is serving a sentence for treason, and in flashbacks to various dates and places in China and France. In 1964, Gallimard was sent to Beijing, where he fell in love with Song Liling upon hearing the Chinese Opera star sing “Un bel dì” from Madama Butterfly at a party. Their relationship develops, even as the Frenchman is unaware that Song is male. Gallimard begins to think of himself as the American sailor Pinkerton in Puccini’s opera and of Song as the geisha Butterfly.
Columbia University School of the Arts to Present New Plays Festival This Month /
Columbia University School of the Arts will present an expanded festival of new plays written by Columbia MFA Playwriting Students. The esteemed faculty who have nurtured these students, including Tony, Pulitzer, and Obie Award winners such as David Henry Hwang, Lynn Nottage, Charles Mee, and Rogelio Martinez invite you to experience these innovative new playwrights.
This is the third round of their New Plays Festival presenting the work of the 2020, 2021, and 2022 Playwrights of Columbia's MFA Theatre Program. The festival will run continuously throughout the summer.
Columbia University School of the Arts Presents A Festival of New Plays Written by Columbia MFA Playwriting Students /
Fiona Gorry-Hines, Evie Mason, Kate Pressman, Alaudin Ullah, Tré Calhoun, Kanika Asavari Vaish, morgan mcnaught, Clarity Bian, and Daniel Irving Rattner.
Columbia University School of the Arts presents an expanded festival of new plays written by Columbia MFA Playwriting Students. The esteemed faculty who have nurtured these students, including Tony©, Pulitzer, and Obie Award winners such as David Henry Hwang, Lynn Nottage, Charles Mee, and Rogelio Martinez invite you to experience these innovative new playwrights.
This is the third round of our New Plays Festival presenting the work of the 2020, 2021, and 2022 Playwrights of Columbia's MFA Theatre Program. The festival will run continuously throughout the summer.
From the Head of Playwriting, David Henry Hwang: "These plays have been created by visionary writers under extraordinary circumstances. Some were originally scheduled to be produced as far back as 2020; others were written during the pandemic itself. Like theatre itself, they have survived the shutdown of our art form to come roaring back to life. We are so proud of what our writers have achieved during these challenging and traumatic times. Enjoy the rebirth!"
Arama! Japan Interviews Keito Okamoto /
Starting today through July 10, Keito Okamoto will play the role of Song Liling in David Henry Hwang‘s play “M. Butterfly” at the New National Theatre Tokyo. The play will continue on to Osaka, Fukuoka, and Nagoya in July.
I recently sat down with Keito on a video call (all in English) to discuss the play, its LGBT content, his time in New York at drama school, his departure from Hey! Say! JUMP, and more. Check out Keito’s first English language interview below!
Five productions, including the world premiere of ‘M. Butterfly,’ will hit the high notes in Santa Fe /
The Santa Fe Opera will serve fresh twists on classics by Bizet, Rossini, Verdi and Wagner, spiced with the world premiere of “M. Butterfly.”
Based on the Tony Award-winning play of the same name, “M. Butterfly” germinated when the composer Huang Ruo’s opera “Dr. Sun Yat-sen” opened at Santa Fe in 2014. “M. Butterfly” will open July 30.
“He saw the play when he was back in college at Oberlin,” SFO general director Robert K. Meya said.
“M. Butterfly” playwright David Henry Hwang said he’d always imagined his piece transformed into an opera.
Santa Fe commissioned the work from the two artists.
David Henry Hwang's Yellow Face, Directed by Aladdin's Telly Leung, Begins June 22 at Theatre Raleigh /
Performances of the 2007 work, inspired by a Miss Saigon casting controversy, continue through July 3 at the North Carolina venue.
Aladdin star Telly Leung directs Theatre Raleigh's production of Tony winner David Henry Hwang's Yellow Face, which plays the TR Studio Theatre June 22-July 3.
The cast features Hansel Tan (Ping Pong) as DHH, Pascal Pastrana (Mean Girls) as Marcus, Alan Ariano (M. Butterfly) as HYH and Others, Liam Yates as Announcer and Others, Brook North as Stuart Ostro and Others, Ali Evarts as Jane and Others, and Kylie Robinson as Leah Anne Cho and Others, with standbys Tedd Szeto, Ada Chang, and Gus Allen.
Yellow Face blurs the lines between truth and fiction as Asian-American playwright Hwang leads a protest against the casting of a white performer, Jonathan Pryce, as the lead in the original Broadway production of Miss Saigon, condemning the practice as “yellow face.” His position comes back to haunt him when he mistakes a Caucasian actor for mixed-race, and casts him in the lead Asian role of his own Broadway-bound comedy, Face Value.
ALL AGENTS DEFECT: ESPIONAGE IN THE FILMS OF DAVID CRONENBERG /
While the director is often tied up with body horror, the great themes of espionage fiction are present in nearly all his work.
David Cronenberg is that rare filmmaker who is a genre unto himself, such that his name has become an adjective. Yet, when his name is invoked, it’s usually as shorthand for body horror. Certainly, and in spite of his objections, this is to be expected: more than any other director, Cronenberg has examined, in detail both coldly clinical and gleefully perverse, the ways in which psychosexual desire, trauma, and society’s increasing dependency on technology manifest in the gruesome evolution and/or evisceration of the human body.
Indeed, we see a fresh example of this in the promotion and reception of his latest film—his first in eight years—Crimes of the Future (available on VOD today), despite the fact, for as horrific as many of the images and ideas within it are, it’s not really a horror movie. That said, the last thing I want to do is make another tired argument over what counts as a horror movie. Rather, I want to make the case that Cronenberg deserves to be equally synonymous with a different genre, one that he’s spent as much time exploring as body horror.
That genre is espionage.
M. Butterfly. Based on David Henry Hwang’s stage play (itself loosely based a true story), the film sees an French diplomat (Jeremy Irons) engage in a passionate affair with a female Beijing opera singer (John Lone) who he discovers is not only actually a man, but a spy for the Chinese government sent to seduce him into revealing classified information
One of Cronenberg’s most underseen and underrated works, M. Butterfly holds up exceptionally well today, not necessarily as a trans drama (although it certainly approaches its subject matter with more sensitivity and sympathy than other, similarly-themed films from the same time) but as a damning indictment of white, Western orientalist fantasies and naivety.
RUTH LEON RECOMMENDS… DREAM OF THE RED CHAMBER – SAN FRANCISCO OPERA /
Dream of the Red Chamber – San Francisco Opera
Click here to watch : Livestream is on June 19 at 2 pm PT and then available on demand until June 22
Bright Sheng and David Henry Hwang’s Dream of the Red Chamber, the musical retelling of the 18th-century novel by Cao Xueqin, one of China’s literary masterworks, played to sold-out audiences during its world premiere run at San Francisco Opera in 2016. It now returns to San Francisco Opera with a new cast in the original production by director Stan Lai, with sets and costumes by Academy Award-winning production designer Tim Yip and lighting design by Gary Marder.
The opera, sung in English, was rapturously received at its premiere. Playwright David Henry Hwang worked closely with Sheng on the work’s libretto, creating a three-hour opera from a vast literary epic.
David Henry Hwang's Yellow Face, Directed by Aladdin's Telly Leung, Begins June 22 at Theatre Raleigh /
Telly Leung
Aladdin star Telly Leung directs Theatre Raleigh's production of Tony winner David Henry Hwang's Yellow Face, which plays the TR Studio Theatre June 22-July 3.
The cast features Hansel Tan (Ping Pong) as DHH, Pascal Pastrana (Mean Girls) as Marcus, Alan Ariano (M. Butterfly) as HYH and Others, Liam Yates as Announcer and Others, Brook North as Stuart Ostro and Others, Ali Evarts as Jane and Others, and Kylie Robinson as Leah Anne Cho and Others, with standbys Tedd Szeto, Ada Chang, and Gus Allen.
Yellow Face blurs the lines between truth and fiction as Asian-American playwright Hwang leads a protest against the casting of a white performer, Jonathan Pryce, as the lead in the original Broadway production of Miss Saigon, condemning the practice as “yellow face.” His position comes back to haunt him when he mistakes a Caucasian actor for mixed-race, and casts him in the lead Asian role of his own Broadway-bound comedy, Face Value.
Love in the Heavens, Love on Earth /
Live from San Francisco, Bright Sheng’s spacey Dream of the Red Chamber
Artfully assembled for the Golden Gate demographic, Dream of the Red Chamber highlights cultural differences even as it transcends them. On the one hand, the theme, and the high-profile creatives are all Asian, from the English-language librettist David Henry Hwang to the Oscar-winning designer Tim (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) Yip. Yet the medium is Western both in form and in its expressive techniques. Call it “fusion” if you will, but isn’t this beyond?Picture, for purposes of comparison, a Moby-Dick in Kyoto, enacted in fluent Japanese by Americans trained for lives onstage at the Noh.
To adapt a doorstop novel for the lyric stage, you need a big blue pencil. Tolstoy peoples the pages of War and Peace with a cast of more than 500. Prokofiev’s operatic epic retains an unheard-of 70 named parts. Bright Sheng’s Dream of the Red Chamber, drawn from a Chinese classic double the length of the Tolstoy, slashes Cao Xueqin’s slate of 400-plus characters to eight. The San Francisco premiere in 2016 took audiences by storm. Already it’s back, and this time viewers at home can catch it, too.
Best Bets: Sf Opera Offers Online Programs Featuring 'Red Chamber' Star Meigui Zhang /
As San Francisco Opera revives its 2016 world premiere production of Bright Sheng and David Henry Hwang's "Dream of the Red Chamber" this week with a new cast in War Memorial Opera House, the company is also showcasing one of its stars, the rising soprano Meigui Zhang, in two free online videos.
Zhang, who hails from a musical family in Chengdu, China, and has the role of the lovestruck Dai Yu in the opera, is featured in the company's award-winning "In Song" streaming series on its own site, YouTube, Facebook and Instagram, talking about her family background and performing three exquisite songs, accompanied by pianist Ken Noda and pipa player Zhou Yi.
Aladdin's Telly Leung to Direct David Henry Hwang's Yellow Face for Theatre Raleigh /
Performances of the 2007 work, inspired by the Miss Saigon casting controversy, will begin June 22 at the North Carolina venue.
Aladdin star Telly Leung is directing Theatre Raleigh's production of Tony winner David Henry Hwang'sYellow Face, which will play the TR Studio Theatre June 22-July 3.
The cast will feature Hansel Tan (Ping Pong) as DHH, Pascal Pastrana (Mean Girls) as Marcus, Alan Ariano (M. Butterfly) as HYH and Others, Liam Yates as Announcer and Others, Brook North as Stuart Ostro and Others, Ali Evarts as Jane and Others, and Kylie Robinson as Leah Anne Cho and Others, with standbys Tedd Szeto, Ada Chang, and Gus Allen.
Yellow Face blurs the lines between truth and fiction as Asian-American playwright Hwang leads a protest against the casting of a white performer, Jonathan Pryce, as the lead in the original Broadway production of Miss Saigon, condemning the practice as “yellow face.” His position comes back to haunt him when he mistakes a Caucasian actor for mixed-race, and casts him in the lead Asian role of his own Broadway-bound comedy, Face Value.
These groundbreaking theaters shine a spotlight on Asian stories /
In a 1997 East West Players production, John Cho (left) and Reggie Lee perform in FOB, David Henry Hwang’s groundbreaking play.
From New York to Minneapolis to Los Angeles, independent stages fill in the gaps of the American experience.
Avid theatergoer Terry Hong clearly remembers traveling to New York City in 1988 to see playwright David Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly, the first Asian American play to be performed on Broadway.
“It was a life-changing moment for me,” says Hong, who has written extensively about Asian American theater. “Stereotypes were being confronted, dissected, challenged, in the most clever, brilliant ways.”
Based on a true story, the play is about a French diplomat who falls in love with a Beijing Opera star only to have it end in tragedy. Audience members familiar with Puccini’s opera Madama Butterfly would have found similarities at first—until Hwang’s play shatters expectations of how this story is traditionally supposed to play out. Gender, ethnicity, sexuality, and national identity are all questioned and upended.
Hwang won the Tony Award for Best Play that year. As the awards mark its 75th anniversary on June 12, he remains the first and only Asian American playwright to do so.
'Dream of the Red Chamber' returns to S.F. Opera where it was born /
"Dream of the Red Chamber," which went on from the San Francisco Opera to success at the 2017 Hong Kong Arts Festival and then on a tour of China, was the last major contribution of former S.F. Opera General Director David Gockley, before retiring. (Cory Weaver/San Francisco Opera)
Cory Weaver/San Francisco Opera
As San Francisco Opera is reprising its 2016 world premiere of "Dream of the Red Chamber," June 14–July 3, Bright Sheng's musical treatment of a classic Chinese novel is produced by a pan-Pacific cast and crew — Taiwanese, Chinese, Chinese Americans, Korean, Singaporean.
Sung in English with English and Chinese supertitles, the opera, which went on from the War Memorial to success at the 2017 Hong Kong Arts Festival and then on a tour of China, was the last major contribution of former S.F. Opera General Director David Gockley, before retiring. He has commissioned 43 new operas during his long career, eight for the San Francisco company he started running in 2006.
The source is an enormous work, forerunner of endless TV series. Cao Xueqin wrote the first 80 chapters of "Dream of the Red Chamber," first published in 1790, and then collaborators added 40 more chapters later. The book, the source of films and TV series, is so important in China that the word "Redology" was coined for its study.
The most prominent Redologist was Zhou Ruchang, who spent seven decades studying the work. Initially supported by Mao Tse-tung, who claimed to have read "Red Chamber" five times. Zhou — who died in 2012 at age 94 — ended up in prison during the Cultural Revolution anyway.
The novel has been compared to Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" with its tragic romance between Bao Yu (sung by Korean tenor Konu Kim) and Dai Yu (Chinese soprano Meigui Zhang), against the family scheme to have him marry the wealthy Bao Chai (Chinese mezzo Hongni Wu). Important roles are taken by Korean mezzo-soprano Hyona Kim, Taiwanese soprano Karen Chia-ling Ho; the conductor is Singaporean Darrell Ang. Stage director Stan Lai and designer Tim Yip are both Chinese Americans.
The librettist is David Henry Hwang, whose first play — at age 22 — was the 1979 "FOB," but there is nothing "fresh off the boat" about the Los Angeles-born author who lives in New York. Chinese and Asian themes dominate in his large oeuvre of drama and opera, though he readily admits that “my Chinese is fairly nonexistent.”
David Cronenberg movies ranked by how much they make us horny and disgusted at the same time /
If there is one piece of fleshy, throbbing connective tissue between Canadian auteur filmmaker David Cronenberg and American troubadour John Mayer, it is the sentiment that "Your Body Is a Wonderland." While Mayer meant that song to be a body-positive seductive jam, Cronenberg isn't merely aiming to titillate with his films; instead, he embraces and celebrates all aspects of the human body throughout his work. In the realm of the Cronenbergian, an open wound and a sexual orifice are one and the same.
David Cronenberg Movies Ranked By How Much They Make Us Horny And Disgusted At The Same Time
Universal
BY BILL BRIA/JUNE 2, 2022 2:00 PM EDT
If there is one piece of fleshy, throbbing connective tissue between Canadian auteur filmmaker David Cronenberg and American troubadour John Mayer, it is the sentiment that "Your Body Is a Wonderland." While Mayer meant that song to be a body-positive seductive jam, Cronenberg isn't merely aiming to titillate with his films; instead, he embraces and celebrates all aspects of the human body throughout his work. In the realm of the Cronenbergian, an open wound and a sexual orifice are one and the same.
If that idea sounds hot and disgusting in equal measure, then congratulations: you've come to the right ranking! It must be said from the start that this is not a ranking of Cronenberg's output from a "Worst to Best" standpoint. Instead, on the eve of the release of Cronenberg's first feature film in eight years, "Crimes of the Future," here are his films ranked in reverse order by how much they make us horny and disgusted at the same time.
Ranking David Cronenberg’s Non-Horror Movies from Worst to Best /
The Baron of Blood doesn't always need horror to make you squirm.
David Cronenberg is a name synonymous with body horror. From Scanners to The Fly, Cronenberg has made plenty of gross and utterly fascinating horror classics. He is a director who is constantly pushing the envelope for what is permissible onscreen. But his horror movies aren’t the only ones that are audacious or narratively challenging. Cronenberg has made several non-horror films that are equally visceral when compared to the likes of Videodrome. From thrillers to dramas to even romance, Cronenberg has proven himself as an incredibly versatile director.
At this year’s Cannes, he is making his return to the body horror genre with Crimes of the Future. Cronenberg's latest sounds like it could be one of his wildest rides yet. In a recent interview Cronenberg said about the premiere, "I do expect walkouts in Cannes, and that's a very special thing. There are some very strong scenes." Cronenberg continued, "I'm sure that we will have walkouts within the first five minutes of the movie" and also stated that one person who saw the film claimed to almost have a panic attack. After several decades without Cronenberg's wild body horror films, it certainly seems like Cronenberg will be back in fine form with Crimes of the Future.
But before we witness Cronenberg's return to body horror with Crimes of the Future, coming to theaters on June 3rd, here are all of his non-horror films, ranked from worst to best: