'Beautiful experiment' in crossing cultures Updated: 2013-03-08
12:30 By Kelly Chung Dawson in New York (China Daily) A scene of
the re-staged Dance and the Railroad, which David Henry Hwang
wrote in 1980. Provided to China Daily When the playwright David
Henry Hwang wrote Dance and the Railroad in 1980, defining and
documenting the immigrant identity was for many Chinese
Americans a task of serious importance, made more urgent by a
perceived position of weakness relative to a dominant culture.
In the intervening years, much has changed. China is no longer
the obvious underdog, and some might argue that the art of
identity politics has gone out of favor. Hwang has also, in his
own words, "grown up". But his play about two Chinese railroad
workers struggling to deal with the ramifications of an 1867
labor strike is a reminder that for more than a century, Chinese
in the US were at a marked disadvantage. Originally commissioned
by the US Department of Education and now in revival at New
York's Signature Theatre