Soft Power (musical)

Soft Power is a musical (also referred to by its authors as a "play with a musical") with book and lyrics by David Henry Hwang and music and additional lyrics by Jeanine Tesori.

Soft Power was intended as a "reverse The King And I". Instead of exoticizing an Asian country, Soft Power exoticizes America by looking at it from a hypothetical future Chinese musical. It also serves as a quasi-sequel to Hwang's 2007 play Yellow Face. Like that play, the semi-autobiographical work centers around a stand-in for the author named DHH interacting with fictional characters. The play was partially inspired by a 2015 stabbing of Hwang by a stranger on the streets of New York City.