Through musical theater Chinese-American Welly Yang, a rising star on Broadway, and his Japanese-American fiancee Dina Morishita give voice to the inner thoughts of Asian Americans. They hope their efforts will meet with a response from mainstream American society. (photo by Jimmy Lin)

As the conductor moves his baton, the National Concert Hall fills with lavish and thunderous notes, and the spotlight illuminates Welly Yang. With a deep, sonorous voice, he belts out "Anthem" from the Broadway musical Chess, which is the prelude to his own musical Finding Home.

"What is your desired home? Is it your ancestors' blood and sweat or chasing after your own dream?" Yang has taken his father Yang Tzu-hsiung's true life story of struggling overseas for 40 years and turned it into musical theater: A native son of Tainan goes to America to pursue his studies so as to carry on his father's legacy as a physician. Once there he fails to live up to his father's expectations, but settles down. Then, some 20 years later, when he wants his own son to continue his professional legacy, he discovers that his son has already found a new garden in his own land of dreams.

With a simple structure but rich content, Finding Home borrows some of Broadway's most familiar songs, such as "On Broadway" and "Elaborate Lives." It also rewrites some famous Taiwanese folk and pop songs, including "A Little Bird Is Crying," "Eternal Homeland," and Lim Giong's "Marching Forward." Both types of song capture the hearts of the audience. The use of multimedia, moreover, gives the show a cutting-edge feel. A film clip of Yang's parents' wedding is spliced together with footage of the play's opening at UCLA's Royce Hall, when Yang actually proposed to the female lead, Japanese-American Dina Morishita. It infuses even more passion into the atmosphere of joy and surprise.

On Christmas night of 2005, crowds of music aficionados made their way toward the National Concert Hall to enjoy a modern dramatic musical: Finding Home. Quite a few of them were going because of the play's writer and male lead: Welly Yang, winner of a Remy Martin XO Honor given at the 2006 Asian Excellence Awards.

All 4,000 seats for each of the two eagerly anticipated performances sold out. Yang's parents, meanwhile, were overcome with joy about their son's return to Taiwan--because for them Taiwan is forever their homeland and the place of Welly's roots.

Six years ago, with Broadway's halo hovering overhead, Yang brought a company of 27 actors, orchestral musicians, dancers and technicians to Taiwan to perform his own musical Making Tracks. The drama traced two Asian-American families through a century of struggles: a Chinese family whose immigrant founder travels across the Pacific to dynamite mountain slopes and lay railway tracks, and a Japanese family who were treated like prisoners of war and placed in an internment camp during World War II. More than 85% of the musical's seats were filled for its performances in Taipei and Kaohsiung, and six shows in Taipei totally sold out. The play not only sparked enthusiasm for musical theater but also provided an introduction to a versatile ethnic Chinese superstar of the new generation: Welly Yang, who can act, sing, write and direct.

Yang then obtained the stage rights for Ang Lee's film The Wedding Banquet. The drama likewise revolves around a Taiwanese family that has migrated to the US. It faces the modern dilemma of whether a son should marry and carry on the family line or find love as a homosexual. Yang once again chose Taiwan for the show's opening, and it was, as expected, a smash hit.