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After runs in San Francisco andLos Angeles,Soft Powercomes to the Public Theater in New York this fall.
The production started performances September 24 and will open October 15.
Hwang, who won a Tony forM.
Lets start at the beginning, the initial conception of basically doing a reverseKing and I.
What made you think it was possible to do that, and why was it appealing as an idea?
David Henry Hwang:Was it possible?
Thats a good question.
Im pretty used to this idea of the white savior in Asia trope.
But advisor was a bit much.
[Director] Leigh Silverman and I were trying to talk Jeanine into doing this.
Jeanine Tesori:Churchill?
Well, that is really funny.
I just thought it was an unexpected and completely inevitable idea.
At that point it was way before the election, it was before the stabbing.
I thought, Okay.
Say yes to it.
Youll figure the rest out.
How did they change what you originally set out to do?
He was going to help her solve the problem of gun violence.
Then we had a reading of an early iteration of that the day before the 2016 election.
But it could be good for the musical.
I thought,This is not going to stay in the musical.
:This is Davids story, and Leigh and I are white women.
Even sometimes David is the reluctant passenger.
:I mean, theres no reason to name a character Jeanine Tesori.
:We could do for the next piece.
J.T.:Never!
Jeanine, Im interested in the writing of the music.
The conceit of the musical is that its written in China in imitation of a Broadway show.
How do you even approach figuring out what that would sound like?
I went to China in 88.
Our guide was killed at Tiananmen Square.
We worked with students there.
If you listen to K-pop or Mandopop today, it doesnt sound traditionally Asian.
Its basically an appropriated form.
Were playing with that idea as well as the conceit that all of this is a David fever dream.
Its a future China through the lens of a current-day Asian-American.
What made you interested in keeping with that character?
:[to D.H.H.]
Then after the horror, examining the uncertainty, the mess of it.
Trying to assign meaning to something that mightve been meaningless, meaningful, a hate crime, an attack.
What have you been talking about changing as youve gotten the feedback fromSoft Powers run in L.A.?
:One is to make the D.H.H.
Then the other thing in the musical itself is to make it less caricature-y.
But you include a few scenes elsewhere that criticize the Communist Party.
:Were trying to critique the Communist system and the Chinese system more than we did in L.A. On the other hand, it is now more firmly embedded in the David fever dream.
:Its not an East-West musical, but one other thing that was a useful form wasMr.
Burns, a Post-Electric Play.Mr.
Burnsstarts as a play, and by the time you get to the third act, its an opera.
:I love Fred Hersch, and he wrote a piece calledComa Dreams.
I saw it at least six or seven years ago, and I thought it was incredible.
He was in a coma, and this subterranean world of the subconscious opened up as a narrative.
Its always stayed with me, that sort of Dante-esque exploration, beautifully crafted.
I think thats where David has been leading us, in the canoe.
The whole cast is made up of Asian-American actors, except for Alyse Alan Louis, who plays Hillary.
Thats very rare for an American musical.
:I have been very moved working with an Asian-American cast, and their stories about being in musicals.
Feeling that what she could bring to it in terms of authenticity and experience was being disregarded.
At least based on the California response, I feel likeSoft Powerspeaks quite powerfully to an Asian-American audience.
Its an example of representation and seeing themselves that they havent gotten before.
It just hasnt existed.
I remember the National Asian-American Theater Company, NAATCO, didFalsettoland.
The actors were sort of saying, Well, this is actually closer to my experience than playing Tuptim.
