The Man Who Can Make Bruce Lee Talk
Jeff Brown for The New York Times
David Henry Hwang, whose new play, “Kung Fu,” is inspired by Bruce Lee.
By ALEX WITCHEL
Published: November 7, 2012 8 Comments
On a late summer morning, in a room far west on 42nd Street, Bruce Lee, who has yet to become the greatest martial artist of all time, is putting the moves on a young Japanese-American dancer.
“Cannot fight the qi force,” Bruce informs her. “Energy. Between man and woman. Very powerful. So must allow the flow, the qi force to —”
She interrupts him. “You’re using ancient Chinese philosophy? To get into my pants?”
“Philosophy,” he says, “it should be practical.”
The line got its laugh from the small group in attendance, including David Henry Hwang, who wrote it. As he listened to the first 70 pages of his new play, “Kung Fu,” his face softened. The brashness of the Bruce Lee he is creating tickled him. The only thing that betrayed his anxiety was his right hand, clamped so firmly over his mouth that it seemed to become his center of gravity. He learned long ago not to reveal his feelings.
A quarter-century after “M. Butterfly” won him the Tony Award, Hwang, a first-generation Chinese-American, still bends under the lifelong weight of expectations from his high-achieving immigrant family. He will come to sparkling life on a panel or at a lectern; he will give a pithy quote about multiculturalism to the media. But the real Hwang, the one with the wicked sense of humor, the soaring emotionalism of an opera diva and the pounding anger of a neglected child, is glimpsed almost exclusively onstage. So today, it is Bruce Lee who gets all the best lines, the ones Hwang would never even consider saving for himself.
When the reading was over, James Houghton, the founding artistic director of the Signature Theater, where it took place, embraced Hwang and said, “It’s great, man.”
Hwang answered excitedly: “I know where it’s going, I’m finding his voice.” When he realized I’d heard him, he balked. “I have to get a mint, excuse me,” he said, walking away. This was classic Hwang. Don’t count your chickens and never brag.
This year, though, Hwang has earned his bragging rights. The Signature will devote a season to his 32-year career, reviving two plays, and will support the world premiere of “Kung Fu.” Yes, you can win a fellowship from the Guggenheim or Rockefeller Foundations (Hwang has won both) to prove your playwriting prowess, but in the American theater, nothing tops a Signature season. Among Hwang’s predecessors are Arthur Miller, Edward Albee, Sam Shepard and August Wilson.
On Tuesday, Hwang’s season opens with “Golden Child,” a juicy family history inspired by his great-grandfather’s three wives. The play ran on Broadway in 1998 but began as an oral history that Hwang took as a 10-year-old from his grandmother, the golden child of the title and among the first generation of girls never to have her feet bound. When she became ill in 1968 and seemed near death, Hwang traveled to the Philippines (alone), where he wrote her story, which became the basis for the play. She did not die. She saw the play, at 90, in California.
Next up is the first major New York revival of “The Dance and the Railroad,” a poignant pas de deux between two young Chinese immigrants in the 1860s, torn between their impulses to assimilate and to preserve their cultural heritage. Joseph Papp produced it at the Public Theater in 1981. “Kung Fu,” which Hwang envisions as a play with music and movement, requiring a more elaborate production, will open in the 2013-14 season.
Hwang, 55, has had the career of a golden child himself. He began working as a playwright while a senior in college, when he wrote “F.O.B.” (fresh off the boat) for a production in his dormitory at Stanford. The following year, the play opened at the Public Theater, winning an Obie Award. At 24, he dropped out of the Yale School of Drama because, well, he was already in business. Six years later, “M. Butterfly,” based on the true story of a French diplomat’s 20-year affair with a Chinese opera star who was actually a male spy, made him the most famous Asian-American playwright in the history of the American theater.
Along the way, he was anointed as spokesman, standard-bearer and, unavoidably, lightning rod of sorts among Chinese-Americans, freighted with their expectations, jealousy, anger and pride, sometimes all at once. The secret to his career success, besides good manners and a thick skin, is that his talent, bold and undeniable, has always been paired with a killer work ethic. He has had seven shows produced on Broadway; along with his own plays, he co-wrote the book for Disney’s musical version of “Aida” (score by Elton John), and he wrote the book for Disney’s “Tarzan” (score by Phil Collins).
Hwang’s writing veers tonally from sharp and funny to dramatic and sweeping to poetic and lyrical, but it is the emotional intricacy of his characters’ struggles — most often strangers in a strange land, unfamiliar with the language or, even more dangerously, with the language of love — that resonates after the curtain falls.
Hwang’s most recent play, “Chinglish,” about an American hoping to do business in China, was inspired by his own visits there in 2005, when he saw translated signs like “Deformed Man’s Toilet” in place of “Handicapped Restroom.” These mistakes became the backdrop for his musings on communication — whether in business or in romance, you can’t always assume the other person knows what you’re trying to say. Leigh Silverman, who directed the 2011 Broadway production of “Chinglish,” encountered Hwang’s idiosyncratic mode of communication during their first meeting, when he considered her to direct his previous play, “Yellow Face.” It is a darkly farcical work, a complex mix of fact and fiction starring a character named D.H.H. “He thought I didn’t understand the play,” Silverman recalled, “and he thought I didn’t like the play. But he hired me anyway, since he knew at the very least I would be honest. David is rigorous with himself, always looking for the better idea.” His instinct was right. “Yellow Face” ran at the Public Theater and became a Pulitzer finalist. Silverman will also direct “Golden Child” and “Kung Fu.”
“David writes plays that are unique to him as both insider and outsider in this country and in China,” she said. “He lives in an uncomfortable juxtaposition of success and a deep state of anxiety. He’s an incredibly tender person, sensitive, but also tender to the world, which makes him a great writer and a great empath.”
Finding the softer side of a tough guy like Bruce Lee, who died in 1973 at 32, is a perfect Hwang assignment. “If you look at all the images I grew up with,” Hwang said when we spoke at Signature after the reading, “Asian men were villains or comic figures or subservient like Hop Sing, the Cartwright family’s cook on ‘Bonanza.’ Bruce Lee created this new paradigm that an Asian man can be strong, respected. He wanted to be a hero, this Asian kid from Hong Kong who had an accent, whose English was poor, who wore glasses, the opposite of what we imagine a hero to be. How he gets there is a humanizing story, someone who could easily have failed, who did fail at certain things.”
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Sara Krulwich/The New York Times 
Sara Krulwich/The New York Times