Playwrights Foundation to Honor David Henry Hwang With 2025 Impact Award
The awards will be presented at Playwrights Foundation’s Constellations 47th Birthday Benefit in San Francisco at the Verdi Club on Monday, July 21, 2025.
By: Chloe Rabinowitz Jun. 02, 2025
Playwrights Foundation, the West Coast’s premier launchpad for exceptional new plays and playwrights, will honor Tony and Pulitzer Award winning playwright David Henry Hwang (Yellow Face, M. Butterfly) with the 2025 Impact Award in recognition of his theatrical achievements and profound influence on current and rising generations of writers.
“When Playwrights Foundation first supported David Henry Hwang in 1980 during one of the first Bay Area Playwrights Festivals, he was a brand new theatrical voice with massive potential. Now he is a prolific, award-winning writer who has changed the American Theatre,” says Executive Artistic Director Jessica Bird Beza. “We’re delighted to honor his groundbreaking achievements while celebrating 47 years of Playwrights Foundation’s enduring impact of championing the next generation of playwrights who are changing the world through storytelling.”
Says Hwang, “Playwrights Foundation played such a formative role in my development as a dramatist. Returning will be full-circle for me, a chance to reconnect with my younger self and an organization which has continued to inspire me."
The organization’s 2025 Launch Award will be given to Dan Wolf, a recent alum of the organization’s Resident Playwrights Program and a multi-disciplinary theatermaker changing the future through his internationally recognized historical remembrance work with young artists.
“Dan’s multifaceted artistry combines theatre and hip hop to give voice to hard truths. Drawing from years of performing, writing and teaching, Sound in the Silence was born, a powerful project that creates live performances on-location at memorial sites connected to the Holocaust in Europe, “says Executive Artistic Director Jessica Bird Beza. “We are thrilled to help launch awareness for his historical remembrance work in the United States to highlight the life-changing experience that comes from wrestling with a dark past through art.”
“Playwrights Foundation is the closest thing I've had to an artistic home in a long while. I am deeply grateful for the work they do for our fractured field and cannot wait to support what they do well into the future,“ adds Wolf.
The awards will be presented at Playwrights Foundation’s Constellations 47th Birthday Benefit in San Francisco at the Verdi Club on Monday, July 21, 2025 with memorable presentations from each of our honorees. Tickets range from $75-$2,500 and can be purchased at www.playwrightsfoundation.org.
David Henry Hwang
David Henry Hwang, most recently represented on Broadway with the critically acclaimed revival of Yellow Face starring Daniel Dae Kim, is a Tony, Grammy and three-time OBIE Award winner, as well as a three-time Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama. His stage works includes the plays M. Butterfly, Yellow Face, Chinglish, Golden Child, The Dance and the Railroad, and FOB, as well as the musicals Aida, Flower Drum Song, Disney’s Tarzan, and Soft Power. Hwang is currently working on the new musical Particle Fever, based on the 2013 documentary about the largest scientific experiment ever undertaken.
Hwang has written fourteen opera libretti, with Opera News calling him America’s most-produced living opera librettist. Recent premieres include Ainadamar, An American Soldier, Circus Days and Nights, The Rift, and M. Butterfly. His new opera, The Monkey King, will receive its World Premiere at San Francisco Opera this fall. He also co-wrote the Gold Record Solo in 1994 with the late pop star Prince. From 2015-2019, Hwang was a Writer/Consulting Producer for the Golden Globe-winning television series The Affair. His screenplays include Possession, M. Butterfly, and Golden Gate.
Recent honors include his 2022 induction onto the Lucille Lortel Playwrights Sidewalk, an Honorary Doctorate (his seventh) from California State University in 2022, his 2021 election to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and his 2018 induction into the Theatre Hall of Fame. Hwang has been a member of the Dramatists Guild since 1979 and also serves on the Council of the Guild. He is a Trustee of the American Theatre Wing, which he Chaired from 2016-2021.
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