*FOB (play) 1979

The Dance and the Railroad (play) 1981; adapted as a teleplay, 1982

Family Devotions (play) 1981

†The House of Sleeping Beauties [adaptor; from Yasunari Kawabata's novella] (play) 1983

†The Sound of a Voice (play) 1983

As the Crow Flies (play) 1986

Rich Relations (play) 1986

M. Butterfly (play) 1988; adapted as a screenplay, 1993

1000 Airplanes on the Roof [librettist; with Philip Glass and Jerome Sirlin] (musical) 1988

Bondage (play) 1992

The Voyage [librettist; with Philip Glass] (opera) 1992

Face Value (play) 1993

Golden Gate (screenplay) 1994

Golden Child (play) 1996

Trying to Find Chinatown (play) 1996

The Silver River [librettist; with Bright Sheng] (opera) 1997

Peer Gynt [adaptor; from Henrik Ibsen's play] (play) 1998

Aïda [adaptor, from Giuseppe Verdi's opera; with Linda Woolverton, Robert Falls, Elton John, and Tim Rice] (opera) 1999

The Flower Drum Song [adaptor, from Oscar Hammerstein and Richard Rodgers' musical and C. Y. Lee's novel] (musical) 2001

Possession [adaptor; from Peter Sís' autobiographical children's book] (screenplay) 2002

Ainadamar [librettist; with Osvaldo Golijov] (opera) 2003

The Sound of a Voice [librettist; with Philip Glass] (opera) 2003

Tibet through the Red Box [adaptor; from Peter Sís' autobiographical children's book] (children's play) 2004

*This work was republished in 1990, along with several others, in FOB and Other Plays; the acronym refers to the phrase “fresh-off-the-boat.”

†These works were performed together as Sound and Beauty in 1983.