Soft Power echoes the David Henry Hwang who wrote the book and lyrics for the show.Jeanine Tesori, Tony winner for Fun Home and Kimberly Akimbo, composed the tuneful score, and additional lyrics, for the satire, which Hwang had originally conceived of as a “reverse The King and I.” The idea, as the M. Butterfly author explained to the audience on press night, was to have a Chinese person come to America, and, like Anna in The King and I, “teach an American ruler something important about civilizing their country.”As the collaborators first got to work on Power, in the months leading up to the 2016 election, the ruler Hwang had in mind was Hillary Clinton, who would learn something about gun violence.