At the Curran’s season announcement party in January, playwright David Henry Hwang defined soft power in contrast to economic and military power. China, he said, already has the last two, but it doesn’t have the first, which he described as a kind of cultural or intellectual capital.
In his and Jeanine Tesori’s new piece, “Soft Power,” he envisions what the world and what musical theater might look like once China achieves that additional influence over the world.