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

Literary Review, Wntr, 1999 by Bonnie Lyons

And your new play?

Probably, The Three Sisters. I guess it's the three wives now! And in terms of its being a memory play with a narrator it's like The Glass Menagerie. In The Glass Menagerie the narrator plays himself at a younger point in his life, whereas in my play the narrator plays his own great-grandfather in the scenes from the 20s.

Do the three generations of Family Devotions represent your reading of the typical Chinese-American immigrant pattern--the first generation is tied to the past whether u false sense of the past or not, the second generation repudiates the past and accepts American values, and the third generation tries to come to some accommodation with the past and with America?

I think that's a pretty general sociological pattern for most American immigrant groups, but my own personal pattern is more complicated because I am not actually third generation. Even though my parents were immigrants, they chose to assimilate to a large extent--so they were like the first two generations in a way. My whole personal political development is largely a reaction to the fact that my parents did assimilate. If they had been more traditional and tied to the root culture, I would probably be a completely different person.

In recent years you've written screen plays us well us plays. Can you talk a bit about your career as a screen writer?

Since M. Butterfly my play output has been quite slim. I think that's because I was living in L.A. and writing screen plays. Now that I'm living back in New York I feel like I have a better balance between my playwriting life and my screenwriting life.

Do you take your film writing as seriously as you do your plays?

It's hard not to take film writing less seriously because it's so easy to lose control of a film script. Pictures get changed when they come out and others don't even get made. So much of the process is out of your hands as a writer. I appreciate L.A. as a way to support my family and to have something to do between play ideas, to keep my muscles going, but because I have some control over my plays I can't help but take them more seriously.

Was your decision to move back to New York related to the fact that you grew up in the L.A. area and your family is there, and a need to define yourself as a separate person?

Possibly, but I really think my desire not to live in L.A. has less to do with my family and more to do with trying not to get caught up in film writing.

I understand that in high school you were a musician and star debater. Do you think those early interests have affected you as a playwright?

Music really helps in terms of developing structure and dramatic growth, and jazz in particular helps with theatrical improvisation. As a jazz musician you get used to peaks and valleys and tensions--and these same things occur in theater which, like music, is a time art. And my early interest in debate no doubt contributed to my theatrical interest in the opposition of ideas and the interplay of ideas in many plays.