David Henry Hwang

"You hogged him all night," observed Fernando.  Yes, I did.  After Monday's rehearsal, I unabashedly pelted David Henry Hwang (DHH) with question after question.  Although it seemed so natural and easy at the time, the light of day brought forth my familiar self-consciousness.  My Korean father always reminds me that I talk too much, and his voice arose again.  Oh dear, I thought after hearing Fernando.  Maybe I did it again.  Maybe I just talked too much.



But a curious soul lives in the Question and perpetually delights in the Answer.  And so, here were some of the reasons I kept asking, commenting, postulating, offering ... that is, talking ... to DHH over tater tots and Stella Artois.



I can't even remember my first question.  The chronology is obscured by adrenaline and the sheer volume of material.  So in this entry, I'll begin with the first page of the script -- the dedication page which names Sam Shepard.  How did that come about?



The news-clip version is that DHH was in a play-writing workshop of Shepard's when the idea of "Family Devotions" (FD) came to him.  The juicy morsel, however, is this.  DHH, like Chester in FD, was a violinist.  One day during the workshop, he was practicing in the woods when Shepard heard him.  Shepard then asked DHH to provide music for one of his plays which was being "produced" at this workshop.  Since DHH was able to improvise on the violin, he agreed and went on to underscore Shepard's piece.



I observed that most Asians do not improvise on instruments.  We are largely classically trained, and in the music world, we are known as "readers."  He agreed and stated that his sister, who played cello, fell into the category of readers.  He, however, discovered that he was better at improvising than at executing music.  How interesting, I thought, that he was willing to display his improvised musical voice.  We, of the second-generation, are programmed to obey, not think independently.  Improvisation takes a willingness to "make something up," to be unique, to produce an unfettered sound.  He agreed with my general idea and then embarked on one of the most moving moments of the evening.  It makes sense, he stated, that he became a playwright -- someone who develops their own personal voice.  Wow -- even celebrities can see the seeds of themselves.



On the other hand, since I, at my ripe age, am only now starting to own my voice ... perhaps it makes sense that I live under the canopy of another's words.  But I digress from DHH.  That is another story for a different day.  Back to Monday night at O'Malley's.



What else?  Ah, the hour is late, and my memories are melting together.  I do remember pondering the differences between a playwright's voice in the theater, on TV and in a musical.  We honored the beauty of "Love, Look Away" in "Flower Drum Song."  I asked about his mother.  I offered my own theory as to why his grandmother dies in so many of his plays.  Only snippets are coming to me now:  China and Broadway, pets in FD and his own house,  the shelter that a wife can take in her husband, the ferocity of the voice of 20-something Asian-Americans, Korean-American playwrights, the effects of geography on Far East Asian psychology, and the poignancy of the desire to assimilate as reflected in "Chinglish."



Perhaps I did hog the playwright.  If so, please see this blog as my apology.  Use this entry as a means to elbow your way into the conversation.  I promise now to sit back now, and listen.





 

I've had the honor to serve as the dramaturg on two of the three productions comprising the "Summer of David Henry Hwang," the other being Silk Road Theatre Project's production of Yellow Face. As a high school and college student, my discovery of Hwang's plays led to another, more personal discovery of my own ethnic background. Being half-Filipino, I had never considered myself to have had what some may call a "typical" Asian American upbringing, and the playwright's description of having undergone an "isolationist/nationalist" phase, in which you reclaim your cultural heritage and identity, fueled my own.



Needless to say, Hwang's work has been pretty important to me.



Having gone through the process of working on Yellow Face, re-reading Family Devotions was an odd experience for me. The newer play is an excoriation of identity politics and the multicultural movement. It undermines the notion of an inborn, essential cultural or ethnic identity. Marcus, the white fraud masquerading as an Asian, says to DHH, "David, are you familiar with the Chinese concept of 'face?' Basically, it says that the face we choose to show the world--reveals who we really are." This concept contrasts with the previously held assertion that Asian Americans needed to rally around an agreed-upon racial identity in order to stake a place in America. Marcus's notion actually aligns well with a Japanese saying (which I admit to have gotten from watching Mad Men): "A man is whatever room he's in."



How strange it was, then, to revisit the now thirty year-old Family Devotions, in which Di-gou, the uncle from the PRC, says to young Chinese American Chester,

"There are faces back further than you can see. Faces long before the white missionaries arrived in China. Here. [He holds CHESTER's violin so that its back is facing CHESTER, and uses it as a mirror.] Look here. At your face. Study your face and you will see--the shape of your face is the shape of faces back many generations--across an ocean, in another soil. You must become one with your family before you can hope to live away from it. [...] The stories written on your face are the ones you must believe."

Here is a much younger David Henry Hwang, telling me--reminding me--to take heed of what has come before me, that where I come from matters, even if I have to do some work figuring out where I came from. That those things define who I am. This is the very idea that modern day Hwang now dismisses. But is it any less valid? I don't think so. Family Devotions may be the product of the bygone multicultural era, but that doesn't means its insights are moot. Can I be who- and whatever I want to be? Sure. But can where I come from and the color of my skin also inform that? Also sure. This is America, dammit.