page_title: David Henry Hwang
section_title: Back to The Public
hierarchical_section_title: David Henry Hwang / Career / Back to The Public
caption_attribution_description: English: David Henry Hwang at The Public Theater in New York, Photo by Lia Chang
context_page_description: David Henry Hwang is an American playwright, librettist, screenwriter, and theater professor at Columbia University in New York City.
context_section_description: Hwang's 2007 play Yellow Face relates to his play Face Value, which closed in previews on Broadway in the early 1990s. He wrote it in response to a controversy about the casting of Jonathan Pryce in a Eurasian role in Miss Saigon. Face Value, which included music and lyrics for a musical-within-a-play by Hwang, lost millions of dollars. It was a stumbling block in the careers of Hwang and producer Stuart Ostrow.
  In Yellow Face, Hwang wrote a semi-autobiographical play, featuring him as the main character in a media farce about mistaken racial identity. This had been also an important element in Face Value.
  Yellow Face premiered in Los Angeles in 2007 at the Mark Taper Forum as a co-production with East West Players. It moved Off-Broadway to the Joseph Papp Public Theater, an important venue for Hwang's earlier work. It enjoyed an extended run at the Papp, and won Hwang his third Obie Award for Playwriting. The play was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
  Hwang also wrote a new short play, The Great Helmsman for the Papp's night of plays: Ten.
caption: David Henry Hwang at the Public Theater in New York City in 2008.
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