Are you a combination of actor, director, producer, designer, or anything else? Congratulations, you're a multi-hyphenate! A multi-hyphenate is an artist who has multiple proficiencies that cross pollinate to help flourish professional capabilities. Dear Multi-hyphenate explores the full potential of artists in show business who have taken the paths less traveled. Are you unsure how to stay creative and garner income during the pandemic? Are you sitting on a project and you have no idea how to get started? What if others have cornered you into thinking that you are just an actor, or just a director, or just a producer? Let go of the rules and take agency of your full potential! Listen to me and my guests, the leaders of the multi-hyphenation station, as we dissect the mentality and possibilities about artistic agency."Michael is the glue that holds the Broadway community together." - Tony Award Winner Alice Ripley (Next to Normal)
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Are you a combination of actor, director, producer, designer, or anything else? Congratulations, you're a multi-hyphenate! A multi-hyphenate is an artist who has multiple proficiencies that cross pollinate to help flourish professional capabilities. Dear Multi-hyphenate explores the full potential of artists in show business who have taken the paths less traveled. Are you unsure how to stay creative and garner income during the pandemic? Are you sitting on a project and you have no idea how to get started? What if others have cornered you into thinking that you are just an actor, or just a director, or just a producer? Let go of the rules and take agency of your full potential! Listen to me and my guests, the leaders of the multi-hyphenation station, as we dissect the mentality and possibilities about artistic agency."Michael is the glue that holds the Broadway community together." - Tony Award Winner Alice Ripley (Next to Normal)
“The advice that I would give myself now is not that different than what I believed was true 30 or 40 years ago, which is the thing that makes you different… the thing that makes you unique, idiosyncratic, weird… that is your superpower as a writer. Maybe as a human being, but particularly as an artist or a writer.” – Tony Winner David Henry Hwang
In David Henry Hwang’s play Yellow Face, he explores the Chinese concept of face, an idea that correlates directly to multi-hyphenating. Which is the face we are currently wearing? Which is the one we want the world to believe about us? Which one do we believe the most for ourselves?
Hwang is a giant among us – his resume spans years from hits, to flops, to plays, to operas, to films to brilliant works penetrating the cultural zeitgeist. In this episode, we discuss multi-hyphenating, making choices in our plays, the weight of other people’s opinions, the concept of face, and the state of creating art today. This episode is wonderful for any episode, especially playwrights and soon-to-be playwrights as it is a masterclass of inspiration from one of our great living writers.
David Henry Hwang’s stage work includes the plays M. Butterfly, Chinglish, Yellow Face, Golden Child, The Dance and the Railroad, and FOB, as well as the Broadway musicals Aida, Flower Drum Song, and Disney’s Tarzan. M. Butterfly was revived on Broadway in 2017. His newest musical, Soft Power, a collaboration with composer Jeanine Tesori, received four Outer Critics Honors, a 2020 Grammy nomination and was a Finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize in Drama. Yellow Face was revived on Broadway in Fall of 2024, starring Daniel Dae Kim.
Called America’s most-produced living opera librettist by Opera News, Hwang has written thirteen libretti, including five with composer Philip Glass. An American Soldier (with Huang Ruo) will receive its New York premiere at the Perelman Performing Arts Center in May 2024. Ainadamar (with Osvaldo Golijov) will be seen at the Metropolitan Opera in Fall 2024.
His screenplays include M. Butterfly and he is penning an Anna May Wong biopic to star actress Gemma Chan as well as a musical feature for Paramount Pictures. For television, he was a Writer/Consulting Producer for the Golden Globe-winning television series The Affair and is currently creating and show running a new television series, Billion Dollar Whale. He also co-wrote the Gold Record “Solo” with the late pop music icon Prince.
David Henry Hwang is a Tony Award winner and three-time nominee, a three-time OBIE Award winner, a Grammy Award winner who has been twice nominated, and a three-time Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama. A professor at Columbia University School of the Arts, Hwang is a Trustee of the American Theatre Wing, where he served as Chair, and sits on the Council of the Dramatist Guild. Recent honors include his 2022 induction onto the Lucille Lortel Playwrights’ Sidewalk, his 2021 election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and his 2018 induction into the Theatre Hall of Fame.
In 2016, The David Henry Hwang Society was founded by William C. Boles (Rollins College), Martha Johnson (University of Minnesota), and Esther Kim Lee (University of Maryland). The DHH Society is devoted to the scholarly examination of plays by David Henry Hwang.
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Dear Multi-hyphenate
Are you a combination of actor, director, producer, designer, or anything else? Congratulations, you're a multi-hyphenate! A multi-hyphenate is an artist who has multiple proficiencies that cross pollinate to help flourish professional capabilities. Dear Multi-hyphenate explores the full potential of artists in show business who have taken the paths less traveled. Are you unsure how to stay creative and garner income during the pandemic? Are you sitting on a project and you have no idea how to get started? What if others have cornered you into thinking that you are just an actor, or just a director, or just a producer? Let go of the rules and take agency of your full potential! Listen to me and my guests, the leaders of the multi-hyphenation station, as we dissect the mentality and possibilities about artistic agency."Michael is the glue that holds the Broadway community together." - Tony Award Winner Alice Ripley (Next to Normal)
