Trying to Find Chinatown: Selected Plays

David Henry Hwang has the potential to become the first important dramatist of American public life since Arthur Miller, & maybe the best of them all. —Detroit News

David Henry Hwang has created an extraordinary body of work over the last 20 years: the Tony Award-winning play, M. Butterfly; the OBIE Award-winning & 1998 Tony nominated Golden Child; the libretti to The Voyage (included here) & 1000 Airplanes on the Roof (both for composer Philip Glass); & the book to Aida, which he co-authored. He has received fellowships from the Rockefeller & Guggenheim foundations, the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts & The Pew /TCG National Artists Residency Program.

This eight-play collection includes:

FOB: "fresh off the boat" explores the conflicts between old and new worlds

The Dance & the Railroad: a haunting play about the inhuman conditions of railroad workers in the 1860s American West

Family Devotions: a biting work which probes the religious conflicts in a modern Chinese-American family

The Sound of a Voice: a meditation on the traditional roles of man & woman set in feudal Japan

The House of Sleeping Beauties: a reworking of a novella by Yasunari Kawabata

The Voyage: the libretto to the opera by Philip Glass, which examines Columbus's arrival in America

Bondage: a one-act set in an S&M parlor, which examines racial stereotypes & sexual myths

Trying to Find Chinatown: a two-person play, in which two Asian-American men—one searching for his Asian heritage

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David Henry Hwang is the author of M. Butterfly (1988 Tony, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle awards; Pulitzer Prize finalist), Golden Child (1998 Tony nomination; 1997 Obie Award), FOB (1981 Obie Award), The Dance & the Railroad (1982 Drama Desk nomination), Family Devotions (1982 Drama Desk nomination), Sound & Beauty, Bondage, & Flower Drum Song (2002 revival; Tony nomination).