The Monkey King : A Tale to Tell –
A West Coast Conversation with David Henry Hwang and Huang Ruo

David Henry Hwang’s work includes the plays M. Butterfly, Yellow Face (2024 Tony Award-winning Broadway revival broadcast on PBS Great Performances), Chinglish, The Dance and the Railroad, and FOB, as well as the musicals Soft Power, Flower Drum Song and Disney’s international hits Aida and Tarzan. Called America’s most-produced living opera librettist, he has written thirteen libretti, including Ainadamar with composer Osvaldo Golijov (Metropolitan Opera premiere, Fall 2024) and The Monkey King with composer Huang Ruo (San Francisco Opera). Hwang was a Writer/Consulting Producer for the Golden Globe-winning television series The Affair and co-wrote the Gold Record “Solo” with the late pop legend Prince. He is a Tony Award winner and four-time nominee, a Grammy Award winner and two-time nominee, a three-time OBIE Award winner, and a three-time Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama. Hwang has been inducted into the Theatre Hall of Fame and received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Dramatists Guild in 2025.

Composer Huang Ruo has been lauded by The New York Times for having “a distinctive style.” His vibrant and inventive musical voice draws equal inspiration from Chinese ancient and folk music, Western avant-garde, experimental, noise, natural and processed sound, rock, and jazz to create a seamless, organic integration using a compositional technique he calls “Dimensionalism.” Huang Ruo’s diverse compositional works span from orchestra, chamber music, opera, theater, and dance, to cross-genre, sound installation, architectural installation, multi-media, experimental improvisation, folk rock, and film.  His music has been premiered and performed by the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic, National Polish Radio Orchestra, Santa Fe Opera, Washington National Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Opera Theatre of St. Louis, Asko/Schoenberg, Ensemble Modern, London Sinfonietta. He has written 8 operas including M. BUTTERFLY, THE RIFT, BOOK OF MOUNTAINS AND SEA, BOUND, ANGEL ISLAND, BETWEEN TWO LIGHTS, PARADISE INTERRUPTED, DR. SUN YAT-SEN, and AN AMERICAN SOLDIER, which was named one of the best classical music events in 2018 by The New York Times.  His new opera THE MONKEY KING will be premiered by the San Francisco Opera in 2025. He served as the first composer-in-residence for Het Concertgebouw Amsterdam. Huang Ruo was born in Hainan Island, China in 1976 – the year the Chinese Cultural Revolution ended. Growing up in the 1980s and 1990s when China was opening its gate to the Western world, his education expanded from Bach, Mozart, Stravinsky, and Lutoslawski, to include the Beatles, rock and roll, heavy metal, and jazz. He earned a BM degree from Oberlin College, and MM and DMA degrees from the Juilliard School. Huang Ruo is a composition faculty at the Mannes School of Music.  Huang Ruo’s music is published by Schott/EAM: (www.huangruo.com) 

Photograph by Wenjun Miakoda Liang

In April, Dr. Soyoung Lee joined the Asian Art Museum as The Barbara Bass Bakar Director of CEO coming from the Harvard Art Museums, where she served as the Landon and Lavinia Clay Chief Curator since 2018. At Harvard, she led the museums’ collections-building and exhibitions, as well as its highly regarded Museum Training program, mentoring the next generation of museum professionals. She co-curated the exhibitions Future Minded: New Works in the Collection (2024) and Earthly Delights: 6,000 Years of Asian Ceramics (2022). 

Before her time at the Harvard Art Museums, Dr. Lee spent 15 years at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. As the Met’s first-ever curator for Korean art, Dr. Lee transformed the scope and impact of Korean art and culture — both at the museum and more broadly in the U.S. cultural landscape. Her publications include Diamond Mountains: Travel and Nostalgia in Korean Art (2018), Silla: Korea’s Golden Kingdom (with Denise Patry Leidy; 2013), and Korean Buncheong Ceramics from the Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art (with Jeon Seung-chang; 2011).

Dr. Lee served as Trustee at Large of the Association of Art Museum Curators (AAMC) from 2017 to 2023, also serving as the Chair of its Finance & Audit Committee (2019–2020). She is an alumna of the Center for Curatorial Leadership (2018) and a Visiting Scholar at Stanford University (2024–25). She received her B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. in art history from Columbia University.

Born in Jakarta, Indonesia, Dr. Lee has lived in Seoul, Tokyo, Stockholm, London, Los Angeles, New York, and Cambridge, MA.