Kpfa - Bay Area Theater

This podcast was originally posted on June 8, 2018. Playwright David Henry Hwang and composer Jeanine Tesori discuss their latest project, an original musical titled “Soft Power,” which played at the Curran Theatre June 20-July 8, 2018, with host Richard Wolinsky. After the run at the Curran, the show was retooled and opened at New York’s Public Theatre on September 19, 2019 and closed following a limited run on November 17, 2019. The show was a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, was nominated (but didn’t win) for eleven Drama Desk Awards, and did win four Outer Critics Circle Awards, including Best Off-Broadway Musical in 2020. “Soft Power” starts with a play and turns into a musical, about a reverse “King and I” created in China and produced fifty years in the future, concerning the relationship between a Chinese envoy and Hillary Clinton, which brings up questions regarding cultural appropriation and what is called “soft power,” the power of culture to influence society. Elements of the play,