Theater Experience: Soft Power

I am sitting in the middle of the fifth row of the Curran Theater in San Francisco. Elegantly shaped metals surround a looming stage, lit to resemble twilight. It is thirty minutes in to Soft Power, the brand new satirical stage experience, described in one account as “chocolate with a razer blade inside” and one unlike anything you’ve ever seen, created by Tony Award winner and AAPI arts hero David Henry Hwang and Tony Award winner Jeanine Tesori. The show focuses on Xue Xing, a Chinese executive in 2016 America, falling in love with a free-spirited U.S. leader, their relationship changing them and how they view their countries.