Soft Power

About the show

In 2015, playwright DHH (a stand-in for the author), meets with Chinese film executive Xue Xing about adapting a Chinese film into an American-style romantic comedy musical aimed at Chinese audiences. They attend a performance of The King and I that is a fundraiser for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign alongside Xing's American girlfriend Zoe, where Xing briefly meets Clinton. DHH's efforts to adapt the film, the title of which roughly translates to "Stick With Your Mistake", are complicated by what he sees as different values between American and Chinese culture: he takes umbrage with the ending where the hero returns to an unhappy marriage instead of following his heart, and feels that with the upcoming 2016 election and belief that Hillary Clinton will become President, he needs to write a musical where dreams are fulfilled and freedom flourishes. His view on the matter changes when Clinton loses the election to "the other candidate", and Xue Xing suggests suspending the project in the aftermath. Shortly after, DHH is stabbed in the neck in an apparent hate crime. On the surgery table, he has a hallucinatory vision of a musical retelling of Xue Xing's trip to America, where he meets and falls in love with Hillary Clinton, as written by a Chinese author 50 years in the future. The musical imagines a future where America has lost its soft power, and many of the details about America are "as hilariously inexact as most Western stories set in Asia". For example, Xing travels to the "Hollywood Airport" and Hillary performs a number while revealing a Wonder Woman outfit in a glitzy McDonald's. Most of the "white" roles are played by Asian actors in whiteface and incorrect accents, a reversal of the movie version of The King and I. The musical also examines the nature of democracy, cultural identity, appropriation and racism.