They Call Us Flower Drum Song

Jeff and Phil welcome back acclaimed legendary playwright David Henry Hwang , who talks about his new take on the classic Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Flower Drum Song , now playing at East West Players in Los Angeles. He talks about rewriting and re-contextualizing the book for this beloved show (still only one of the few Broadway musicals to center Asian Americans); refreshing some of the more outdated and regressive elements of the story -- including a few of the cringe-inducing lines from David's own 2002 revisal -- for contemporary times; and how this staging of Flower Drum Song represents a full-circle moment for David's life and career.

You can listen to They Call Us Flower Drum Song online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

They Call Us Flower Drum Song is an episode from They Call Us Bruce by Jeff Yang & Phil Yu.

This episode is 38:28 long.

This episode was published on May 21, 2026.

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