Hwang Pulls ‘Face Value’ From SCR : Stage: The Tony-winner’s work--which had been commissioned by the company--will go to Broadway.

Tony Award-winning playwright David Henry Hwang has withdrawn his latest play, “Face Value,” from South Coast Repertory--which commissioned it--and the theater is putting the best face on the decision.

“We thought it would be better for the play to go into a commercial run and that it was in our best interest not to accept it as fulfillment of the commission,” SCR’s producing artist director David Emmes said Thursday.

“Face Value,” which Emmes described as a farce about racial identity, will be produced on Broadway by Hwang’s longtime East Coast backer, Stuart Ostrow.

Asked whether SCR initiated the idea of a Broadway production or had been asked to pass up the script, Emmes said “Face Value” had been sent simultaneously to Ostrow and that “it was mutually agreed the play was better suited for New York.

“It’s a good decision,” Emmes added. “We’re happy with it. It’s nothing we are upset about.”

SCR literary manager John Glore declined to say how much Hwang had been paid for the script. SCR pays between $6,000 and $12,000 to commission plays from major writers, considerably less for emerging writers. Hwang was not well known at the time of the commission, in August of 1986.

Neither Hwang, who gained fame with “M. Butterfly” in 1988, nor Ostrow, who produced that play on Broadway, could be reached for comment.

But Hwang’s press agent, Gary Springer, confirmed from New York that plans are in the works for Ostrow to produce “Face Value.” Springer said Ostrow and Hwang are negotiating with a director, whom he declined to identify. The play would go into rehearsal “later this year, probably in November or December” for a Broadway opening “around this time next year,” Springer said.

SCR had been hoping to schedule a play by Hwang this spring. Though he was commissioned more than five years ago, he had not delivered a script until last fall. “Face Value” was presented as fulfillment of the commission.

“When we read the play at that time,” Emmes said, “it was our view that it went beyond what we had talked about for the commission. It’s a farce about racial identity very much tied into the casting controversy of ‘Miss Saigon.’ It’s a very specific reaction to a very specific event. We chose not to accept it, and we extended the commission.”

The 34-year-old Hwang, who is Chinese-American and is based in Los Angeles, actively protested the casting of non-Asians actors in Asian roles when “Miss Saigon” was imported from London for a Broadway production in 1990.

SCR has commissioned 35 plays over the last 10 years, according to Glore. Currently there are “about a dozen outstanding commissions,” he said, most of them about 2 years old. Hwang’s commission is the oldest, although Craig Lucas (who gained fame with another SCR-commissioned play, “Prelude to a Kiss”) has yet another commission almost as old.

About 25% of the commissioned scripts eventually are produced by SCR, Glore said. Many others are produced elsewhere.

“We realize that writers with prominent careers are busy,” Glore said. “We’ve waited this long. We’re happy to wait until David Hwang is ready to give us something else.”

The Actors Theatre of Louisville currently is staging Hwang’s first play since “M. Butterfly”--a one-act called “Bondage”--in its Humana Festival.