"Making His Muscles Work For Himself": An Interview with David Henry Hwang - Asian-American playwright

Literary Review, Wntr, 1999 by Bonnie Lyons

Raised in a wealthy Los Angeles suburb by a first generation, Chinese American fundamentalist Christian family, David Henry Hwang wrote and directed his first play, F.O.B. (slang for "fresh off the boat"), which explores the tensions within and between recent and assimilated Chinese immigrants. F.O.B. won an Obie when it moved to New York in 1980 and since then many of Hwang's plays, including The Dance of the Railroad (1981), Family Devotions (1981), The Sound of a Voice (1983), The House of Sleeping Beauties (1983), Rich Relations (1986), M. Butterfly (1988), and Bondage (1992), have addressed issues of individual identity, group identity, and as he explains in this interview, fluidity of identity. Hwang's most famous play, his Tony Award-winning M. Butterfly, exposes Western attitudes toward Asia by deconstructing one of the most powerful and seductive images of the Orient, Puccini's opera, Madame Butterfly. Far more than contributions to ethnic theater, Hwang's plays provide brilliant and complex analyses of the politics of race, gender, class, and sexuality.

The following interview took place on September 7, 1996, a few months before his most recent play, Golden Child, opened in New York.

BL: You've written in many styles and many kinds of plays. Do you see anything linking all your work? What about the issue of identity? Autonomy and community?

DHH: It's probably true that all my work in some sense confronts the issue of fluidity of identity and explores the idea that who we are is the result of circumstance, the result of things that are not necessarily inherent but instead come out of our interaction with our contacts. Many of the plays suggest that if the contact changes, the individual becomes a different person, so to speak. Much of my work is about Asian-Americans, but even in the plays that aren't, you can trace that theme of fluidity of identity. The notion of community vs. the individual is interesting; it's not an idea I've really thought of before in relation to my work. As an Asian-American whose parents are immigrants, one of the dilemmas I feel most strongly in my own life is trying to figure out that issue. I was raised with a mentality that was concerned with group identity and about doing things for the group. But I was also raised as an American, which is essentially about individual identity. So I know that personally the issue of the individual vs. community has been a struggle for me, so it would not be surprising if that came through one way or another in my plays. But it's not actually a theme I've ever set down and traced through.

Do you tend to look back at your body of work and see aspects that you didn't see earlier?

If I compare writing plays to raising children (perhaps I'm inclined to that analogy since my wife and I have an infant!), I'd say that while you're in the process, there's not a lot of time or inclination to reflect on how your parenting style has changed while raising different children. Rather than look back, I'm more interested in focusing on what's next.

How does your interest in fluidity of identity relate to the current notion of the self as theater or self as performer?

In many of my plays there is at least one character playing some role, whether it's a predetermined role that exists in literature like Gallimard playing Pinkerton in M. Butterfly or Steve in F.O.B. playing Gwan Gung. The characters take on various mythologies and try to find themselves in relation to those mythologies, almost as if the search for identity is so difficult and complex that it is easier to hang your hat on a preestablished identity and try to have that become you or you become that thing.

Some critics have said that many of your plays can be seen as confrontations between two opposing forces or two opposing characters in which the seemingly weaker one triumphs. Do you agree?

Most of my plays do have an ideological duality to them; M. Butterfly has a series of them. Golden Child, my most recent play, is a real change--it's my first real ensemble play. But I don't think it is always the case that my plays follow the pattern of the weaker one triumphing over the stronger like Pinter's servant becoming the master. In The Dance and the Railroad, for instance, it's more an issue of the two characters trading positions. But the two positions are not defined relative to one another in terms of power in the same way Pinkerton and Butterfly are defined. Switching places is a very common aspect of my work, and I've been conscious of that when I set out to write them. Golden Child develops the Chinese vs. Christian theme that was in Family Devotions and Rich Relations. I'm not entirely satisfied with those plays; this is my attempt to trace back the roots of the Chinese/Christian conflict. It's about my great-grandfather who converted to Christianity in China in the 20s and the effects of his conversion on his three wives. The conversion obviously created a conflict, so in a sense Golden Child ends up being an ensemble piece about the opposition between Christianity and ancestor worship in terms of dualities.