Think Forum: David Henry Hwang

David Henry Hwang will present as part of Case Western Reserve University’s Think Forum lecture series for 2019-20.

His presentation will be Tuesday, Nov. 5, at 6 p.m. at the Maltz Performing Arts Center, 1855 Ansel Road. Paid parking is available on site, although a free shuttle service will be available from campus.

Events are free, but pre-registration is required. Reservations for the fall lectures are available now, and for the spring lectures starting Jan. 3. Reservations may be made online or by calling the Maltz Center box office at 216.368.6062.

About the speaker

Few writers have turned issues around ethnicity and identity into a widely acclaimed and award-winning career like Hwang. The Chinese American playwright, described by The New York Times as “a true original” and by TIME magazine as “the first important dramatist of American public life since Arthur Miller,” is best known as author of M. Butterfly. That enduring 1988 work, which won a Tony Award, Drama Desk Award, John Gassner Award and Outer Critics Circle Award, was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

M. Butterfly has been staged in more than four-dozen countries and inspired a major motion picture. His newest “play with music,” Soft Power, with composer Jeanine Tesori, premiered in 2018 in Los Angeles and opens in New York this fall. 

Hwang’s play Golden Child subsequently played on Broadway, where it received three Tony nominations, and Yellow Face, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, was named one of the best American plays of the past 25 years by The New York Times in 2018—the year he also was inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame.