The Department of Dramatic Writing was honored to welcome Tony-Award winning playwright David Henry Hwang to NYU Tisch School of the Arts Asia to conduct a masterclass with our playwriting students. Hwang is the author of M. Butterfly, Chinglish, FOB, and many other plays, screenplays and libretti for music theatre pieces. He has collaborated with Philip Glass, David Cronenberg, and Disney Theatricals, and is a three time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.
David Henry Hwang giving notes to D.F.W. Buckingham
Over the course of the workshop, Hwang heard excerpts from four plays. He then talked with each writer one-on-one, walking them through his thoughts on the piece. He clarified that he saw his role as to give them feedback by “focusing on giving a reaction – and a very subjective reaction – rather than giving a prescription”.
In his critiques, he focused as much on a play’s genesis and the writer’s intentions for the piece, as he did on the actual script itself. His notes to the writers became a larger conversation between two artists, as they worked to get to the heart of a play.
Throughout the workshop, Hwang would pepper his notes with questions for the playwrights, such as “How do you feel about that arc?”, or gentle suggestions like “That’s the part of the character journey that can use some more exploration”. Throughout, he encouraged the students to continue digging deeper into the play and their own personal truth.
In a Q&A that followed the workshop, Hwang talked about the process of writing musicals, working in a multiple of mediums, and his reputation as a formalist. He explained that, as a writer, he is interested in seeing what the stage can do, and in offering his collaborators room to create visually striking work. He told the assembled writers that he always looked for subject matter that would challenge him as a writer, and generally wrote to learn more about an issue that he didn’t initially understand.
David Henry Hwang with Teh Su Ching, Dean Lundquist, Lou-Lou Igbokwe, and D.F.W. Buckingham
The Department of Dramatic Writing and Tisch School of the Arts Asia would like to thank Singapore Repertory Theatre for their partnership in bringing David Henry Hwang to our campus.
