David Henry Hwang

The furor continued to swirl Thursday over the cancellation of the Broadway production of the London hit "Miss Saigon." Dissenting members of Actors' Equity submitted a petition urging the union's council to reconsider its rejection of the casting of British star Jonathan Pryce as a Eurasian.

When Actors' Equity denied permission for Jonathan Pryce to appear on Broadway as the Engineer, the Eurasian brothel-keeper in "Miss Saigon," it shot itself in the foot. Producer Cameron Mackintosh had vowed to cancel the production if he couldn't use Pryce. Wednesday, he made good on his promise. No Pryce, no show, no victors.

America will miss "Miss Saigon." The Broadway production of the $10-million musical was canceled Wednesday by its British producer Cameron Mackintosh, angry that Actors' Equity vetoed his casting English star Jonathan Pryce in a lead role. The union denied permission Tuesday for Pryce to re-create his London role in "Saigon." Equity had been prodded by Asian-American activists who objected to the casting of a white actor in a Eurasian role.

David Henry Hwang has been writing plays since the late '70s, but he made his biggest splash in 1988 with "M. Butterfly." It made Broadway swoon and won him a Tony. Hwang went on to write the libretto for the Philip Glass opera, "One Thousand Airplanes on the Roof," which toured several American cities in '88 and some abroad. He's been in demand, in all fields, ever since. He's finishing an as-yet untitled play, "sort of a multicultural farce," that fulfills a commission from Costa Mesa's South Coast Repertory.

"I might have been a diva in China. It used to frustrate me that the moment I awakened the language would be lost. Now I see the loss can be taken as a gain. The trick is to render the opera in English when I awake." --Genny Lim, "A Juk-Sing Opera" In the dawn of the Communist Revolution a generation ago, Mao Tse-tung urged Chinese writers to create dazzling works of art, to "let a hundred flowers bloom."

There is an unprepossessing air about this young man--something permanently boyish, serious, yet mirthful and ever so slightly surprised. In a room full of people and clinking glasses, he would be easy to overlook--unless you knew who he was. Anyone who does know playwright David Henry Hwang also knows that beneath the unassuming exterior and behind the reedy, almost childlike voice, there is a tough-minded guy who knows what he wants, emboldened perhaps by having defied the odds.

Midnight passed, and Monday began. David Henry Hwang, happy, weary, sitting with his wife and the actors from his play, grinned when asked when he thought the lavish Tony party would end. "Sometimes these things end of their own accord," said Hwang, part of the post-show bash at the New York Hilton and winner of his first Tony award for his first Broadway play, "M. Butterfly."

David Henry Hwang is a playwright whose work is consumed by the spooky misconceptions that people have of each other. Racial stereotypes, sexist distortions, colossal international misuderstandings--all of these show up in Hwang's sharply chiseled works, which have made him one of the most praised playwrights in America. Here, then, is a young man whose ideas were shaped in the harsh crucible of the Big City, right? Wrong. The 30-year-old dramatist--whose current Broadway production, "M.