CU-Boulder to Present Two One-Act Plays by David Henry Hwang, Now Through 9/22

Yin and Yang, masculine and feminine, and reality and fantasy will intertwine and fuse on stage with two one-act plays by celebrated playwright David Henry Hwang Sept. 18-22 at CU-Boulder.

"This is a great way to introduce this remarkable playwright to Boulder audiences" beyond his most famous work, "M. Butterfly," says director Cecilia J. Pang, associate professor in the Department of Theatre & Dance.

Hwang's 1981 Pulitzer Prize finalist "The Dance and the Railroad" - part of his "Trilogy of Chinese America" - tells the story of a former opera star and his brother, who are working as coolie laborers at a 19th-century railroad labor camp during a strike.

"It's about Chinese immigrant history, what it's like to be an immigrant and what it means to be an artist," Pang says. "It has a very masculine sensibility."

"The Sound of a Voice" (1983) is a haunting ghost story inspired by Japanese folk tales, films and Noh theater. In a remote corner of a forest, a man comes to kill a "witch" - or is she? - who has lived as a hermit for many years.

The play evokes the feel of "The Woman in the Dunes," the 1964 film by Hiroshi Teshigahara, she says. "It has that kind of sensuality. It's all about duality, hard and soft, earth and water, Yin and Yang."