Who

One of the city's most celebrated playwrights, David Henry Hwang is best known for M. Butterfly and his adaptation of Flower Drum Song.

Backstory

Hwang's work is heavily influenced by his own background. He grew up in Pasadena, California, the son of a banker from Shanghai (his father) and a classical pianist reared in the Philippines (his mother). Hwang wrote his first play, FOB (or "Fresh off the Boat"), before he'd graduated from Yale's drama school. Inspired by stories from Hwang's childhood, the play caught the attention of Joe Papp of the Public Theater, who brought the ambitious student's piece to off-Broadway in 1980. The debut was a huge success, earning Hwang a 1981 Obie award. He wrote several other plays in the early 1980s—including Sound and Beauty, the Pulitzer-nominated The Dance and the Railroad, and the poorly-received Rich Relations—before his breakout hit, 1988's M. Butterfly, based on the relationship between a French diplomat and his Chinese lover, who turns out to be a man; the production took home the Tony for Best Play. He's had other critical successes on Broadway since then, notably 1996's Golden Child and 2002's Flower Drum Song, a re-working of the Roger & Hammerstein musical of the same name.

Of note

Over the past five years Hwang has been diversifying beyond the theater world: He wrote the screenplay for Neil LaBute's 2002 movie Possession, starring Gwyneth Paltrow and Aaron Eckhart, as well as screenplays for Martin Scorsese (an adaptation of Dostoyevsky's The Idiot) and Sydney Pollack; the teleplay for NBC's miniseries The Lost Empire; and librettos for two Philip Glass operas, The Sound of a Voice and The Voyage. But Hwang hasn't abandoned theater entirely. He recently wrote the book for the Broadway version of Tarzan (produced by Thomas Schumacher, designed and directed by Bob Crowley), which concluded a 14-month run at the Richard Rodgers Theater in July 2007. And his first full-length play in over a decade, 2007's Yellow Face—about issues of Asian identity once again—premiered at the Mark Taper Forum in LA in 2007, and later migrated to the theater where his career ignited, the Public.

Personal

Hwang's first marriage, to artist Ophelia Chong, ended in divorce. His second wife is Kathryn Layng, an actress who understudied in M. Butterfly. The couple has two children, Noah David and Eva Veanne, and live in a West 67th Street apartment that once belonged to Kevin Kline and Phoebe Cates.