I hope that what Kung Fu does is take Bruce, who’s a figure
iconically, and try to make him as fully three-dimensional as
Signature: David, a lot of your work has explored
Asian American masculinity. How does Bruce continue
that conversation?
DHH: It’s challenging growing up as an Asian male in America
because a lot of the images that we get tend to be kind of
emasculating or denigrating, where most Asian characters
are either sort of servants, nerds, or villains and you don’t see
a lot of romances with Asian male heroes. Even Bruce, in his
movies, really never ends up being a romantic lead. He creates
the idea of an Asian male hero, which hadn’t really existed in
American popular culture up until that point. In works like
M. Butterfly I dealt with the kind of absence of masculinity, of
what it means to be emasculated and the feminization of the
Asian man. I feel like I’m finally old enough to take on what for
Cole Horibe, Leigh Silverman, and Signature Founding Artistic Director James Houghton
at the first rehearsal for Kung Fu, 2013.
me is, in a way, a more challenging subject, which is how do
you affirm Asian masculinity in a way that is kind of positive
and not cheesy? I hope that what Kung Fu does is take Bruce,
who’s a figure that a lot of people know iconically, and try to
scenes that David has written and this kind of big, epic
make him as fully three-dimensional as he certainly was in life.
storytelling. And there’s been a really interesting dynamic
between these larger dance numbers and this touching
story about Bruce and his relationship to his father and his
relationship to his wife and his son.
Signature: What is it like to direct a “dance-ical”
versus a musical?
Signature: You can actually watch Bruce’s masculinity
taking shape through his physical language in the play.
How does that tie in?
DHH: I think that what makes this a very theatrical approach to the subject of Asian masculinity is that the
development of Bruce’s art becomes a physical
LS: We’re kind of inventing the form to a certain extent.
metaphor for trying to find a positive im-
In musicals you’re looking to tell the important parts of
age of an Asian male. In this play he’s
the story through song. In Kung Fu, we’re looking to
constantly trying to affirm his mas-
have the movement serve that same function, which is
culinity, first as a fighter and then in
to connect us emotionally to the material. So in a musical,
Hollywood. Hollywood becomes
at the moment where someone falls in love we have
problematic, because Hollywood
this great song. And in Kung Fu, we have that story told
doesn’t know what to do with
through a dance piece or a martial arts piece. We use
him as an Asian male hero.
fighting and dancing and Chinese opera sort of inter-
Then he gets to a point where
changeably to help us tell our story.
he has an injury and he’s
completely emasculated
Signature: Can you talk a bit about your team for
this show?
LS: We have a village of people on this show. I have three
which then manifests
people working with me on the movement side of things.
itself in his getting
I have an American choreographer, I have a fight director,
well physically.
and I have a Chinese opera person. And at all times we’re
So the physical
in a giant mind meld trying to figure out how to bring this
aspect functions
story to the stage in an exciting way. Then we also have
metaphorically
a composer who is working with us on the original music
at many differ-
that is used mostly for the sequences that take place in
ent points in
China and Hong Kong.
7
and has to find another
the story.
route to his affirmation