David Henry Hwang’s “Chinglish” on Broadway

November 8, 2011 LuvKitty 0 Comments

Best known for authoring M Butterfly, David Henry Hwang returns to Broadway with his latest Sino American comedy, Chinglish. Though Hwang doesn’t personally speak Chinese, as he grew up in Southern California as a Chinese American, he explores the subtleties and nuances of language and their meanings between cross cultures of America and China with sprinklings of comic relief from mistranslation. The result is a fresh, poignant and timely screenplay brilliantly executed by his handpicked Asian and American cast. Here, Asiance toasts the talented David Henry Hwang on opening night and chats with him about his inspirations and personal experiences that have been translated into the play.

ASIANCE: How did you come up with the idea for ‘Chinglish’?

David: I would go over to Asia for Broadway shows for meetings and once I was taken to a brand new cultural center that was beautiful in every way except for the badly translated Chinglish signs and that’s when I thought about writing a play about doing business which would deal with the issue of language and also one where the Chinese characters can have the dignity with their own language.

ASIANCE: What were some of the more memorable ‘Chinglish’ signs?

David: They’re really all in the play, such as the deformed man’s toilet for handicapped toilets. Not so much in Beijing or Shanghai, as they have tried to clean them up for the Olympics and Shanghai tried to clean them up for the Expo. There are still plenty of them around but if you go to any second tier city, they are all over the place.

ASIANCE: What do you think of bringing Broadway to China?

David: I would love to do the show in China, the one that I’m originally known for, M Butterfly, I can’t really bring over there because of political sensitivities. With this one, there’s some things they might object to. It depends on how the wind blows. We’ll see.

ASIANCE: How did you come to cast your actors?

David: Jennifer Lim was the first person who ever read this part, and we have always loved her. We did our due diligence and she just seemed to be the best fit for the part.

ASIANCE: How has your Asian American background influenced you as a writer?

David: I grew up in LA, and what I found interesting is that when I go to China, I don’t speak the language. In that way, I’m kind of a lousy Chinese but there were things that I intuitively understood, like I know how to behave at a business meeting. Maybe because my father was a businessman, and an immigrant and I knew how he behaved so you just realize that you know things that you didn’t know you knew. A lot of that went into this play.

ASIANCE: How do you think the attitudes of the new generation of Asian Americans growing up in the US will evolve?

David: It’s interesting to me that this play is set in China, 20 or 30 years ago when Asian American writing first started coming out, it was very clear that we wanted to identify as Americans. Now we’re here writing a play that’s set in China. One thing that has changed in the past few decades is this whole idea of having to be one thing or another. This idea of a multiplicity of identities or trans-culturalism. You don’t have to deny the fact that you have an identity of your root culture and you’re American.