Author of the famous play M. Butterfly David Henry Hwang, who is on a Hong Kong visit, said that keeping the career going has been most challenging to a playwright.

The Tony Award-winning Broadway playwright Hwang gave a lecture entitled "The End of Chinese America" at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology on June 22, in which he shared with the audience his evolving views of Chinese Americans and U.S.-China relationships.

Hwang, the only Asian dramatist ever to have his works produced on Broadway, has his career spans more than 25 years. His best known play, M. Butterfly, which ran for two years on Broadway, brought him a number of prizes including the 1988 Tony Award and Outer Critics Circle Awards.

Being a successful playwright, Hwang, however, thought that it was difficult to break in the industry. He said getting the first production and getting people's attention have never been easy.

He said that he was lucky to break in early and had gone through those stages smoothly. He thought that keeping his career move forward was challenging and he had to avoid repeating his own works.

As for art and creation, Hwang believed that every artist has his or her own soil where they keep going back to and investigate it.

"The question is how do you investigate that but in a different way," he said. "For me, I tend to work in different forms so I write plays, operas, movies and musicals."

Born and educated in America, many of Hwang's plays and musicals concern the role of Chinese Americans and cross-cultural identity in the modern day world, such as FOB, M. Butterfly and his latest work Yellow Face.

The America Chinese dramatist said that he wanted to write a story about an American businessman living in China and the misunderstandings that takes place on both sides -- the Chinese and American people.

"Both countries are interested in each other but don't know much about each other," Hwang said, adding there were many culture differences existing between the two nations, and he would spend more time in China in the future to learn more about the Chinese culture.

Hwang has visited Hong Kong several times and gave lectures to local drama students. His works FOB, M. Butterfly, and Golden Child were once performed in the city.

He will stay in Hong Kong until June 30 and within the period he will go and see traditional Cantonese operas and the operation behind so as to collect ideas and materials for his future work.

Source: Xinhua