The Dramatists Guild of America has named playwright David Henry Hwang as the recipient of its 2025 Lifetime Achievement Award. The Dramatists Guild, the professional association for playwrights, librettists, lyricists and composers, will honor the Tony Award winner at the organization’s annual award ceremony on April 28.
Hwang’s theatrical oeuvre comprises plays, as well as both musical and operatic libretti. Hwang won the 1988 Best Play Tony Award for his Broadway debut, the drama “M. Butterfly.” Hwang received subsequent nominations for Best Play in 1998 for “Golden Boy” and Best Book of a Musical for his contributions to the 2002 revival of “Flower Drum Song.” Hwang’s other works include the book and lyrics for the musical “Soft Power,” books of the musicals “Aida” and “Tarzan,” the libretti for the operas “The Monkey King,” “Ainadamar,” “An American Soldier” and “Circus Days and Nights,” as well as the plays “Chinglish” and “Yellow Face,” the latter which received a Roundabout Theatre Company-produced Broadway premiere in fall 2024. Hwang is a three-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
“Over the last four and a half decades, David's ever-increasing body of work endures as one of the great contributions to the American theater canon,” said Samuel D. Hunter, playwright and co-chair of the awards committee, in a statement. “I couldn't be more thrilled that we are celebrating David with the Guild's highest honor. His generosity, grace, humor, craft and deep intelligence has profoundly influenced entire generations of theater artists, myself included. I'm thrilled to see what lies ahead for him.”
“David Henry Hwang continues to give us a window of understanding into ourselves through his brilliant and insightful storytelling, his bold and searingly honest characters and his endless generosity in the form of mentorship and service to playwrights,” added Christine Toy Johnson, council treasurer. “I’m thrilled that we are honoring him in this way, for in fact his lifetime of achievements so far honor all of us.”
The 2024 recipients of the Dramatists Guild’s Lifetime Achievement Awards include Christopher Durang, Emily Mann and George C. Wolfe. Recipients of the remaining 2025 awards (Hull-Warriner, Loewe, Horton Foote, Lanford Wilson, Flora Roberts and DLDF Defender awards) will be announced.
