Based on a true story that stunned the world, M. Butterfly opens in the cramped prison cell where diplomat René Gallimard is held captive by the French government - and by his own illusions. In the darkness of his cell, he remembers a time when desire seemed to give him wings. A time when Song Liling, the beautiful Chinese diva, touched him with a love as lively, as seductive - and elusive - as a butterfly. How could he have known, then, that his ideal woman was actually a spy for the Chinese government – ​​and a man disguised as a woman? What inspired Hwang to write the play and, more importantly, what do the real Song and Butterfly have to say about what really happened?Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essayMr. Butterfly, by David Henry Hwang, takes place in several different places and time periods. It begins in the present, in Gallimard's cell in Paris. Gallimard is the former French diplomat who was imprisoned for treason, and as he tells his story, scenes flash back from locations in Beijing, China, from 1960 to 1970, to locations in Paris from 1966 to today. However, Hwang was not the first person to make history. The original story took place in 1898 when John Luther Long was inspired by his sister's chance encounter with the adult son of the real Butterfly. Shortly after, the short story Madame Butterfly appeared in Century Magazine. According to her sister, Butterfly's "husband" was a British merchant and her suicide attempt had failed. (Origins, 1)Broadway legend and writer David Belasco later wrote the one-act play Madame Butterfly, which premiered on March 5, 1900 at the Herald Square Theater in New York to great success. In addition to beginning when Pinkerton has already been missing for two years, the play closely follows the story of Long's original. However, Belasco thought there would be more drama if Butterfly succeeded in committing suicide. Then Pinkerton would arrive in time to remorsefully cradle the dying body. Adelaide is renamed Kate. Belasco also took a big theatrical risk by taking fourteen minutes for Butterfly to stand still waiting for Pinkerton while a lighting effect showed the passage of night. It was a success. (Origins, 2) Later that year, Belasco's play was presented in London at the Duke of York's Theatre, this time on the program with Jerome K. Jerome's Miss Nobbs. Puccini was in London for the premiere of Tosca at Covent Garden and saw the play on opening night. Even without fully understanding the dialogue, Puccini was so moved by the play that he immediately knew he wanted to create an opera from the story and rushed backstage to meet Belasco. The first version of Puccini's opera failed at La Scala in 1904, but a revised version enjoyed success that same year, the version we hear today, one of the most frequently produced operas in the entire repertoire. As an opera, Madame Butterfly is a staple of the most innovative opera houses and has been seen virtually everywhere opera can be seen. Each director put his own stamp on it. (Origins, 2) In Hwang's version, he addresses themes such as: East versus West, man versus woman, sexuality, power relations, race, gender, class, stereotypes, fantasy, etc. Hwang set out to write a play that would deconstruct the racial and gender stereotypes that the West has adopted in its relationship with Eastern culture. First he needed to show these stereotypes in action. Western imagesNegativity of the Chinese appears frequently throughout the play. Gallimard complains of the arrogance of the Chinese, an opinion he learned in Paris, where, according to him, it is a common belief.M. Butterfly is one of the most famous recent American plays and the first by an Asian American to achieve universal acclaim. It was first produced in 1988 and has won numerous awards, including the Tony Award for Best Play of the Year, the New York Drama Desk Award, the Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Broadway Play, and the John Gassner Award for Outstanding New Playwright of the Season. M. Butterfly was a smash hit on Broadway, and when it transferred to London's Shaftsbury Theater in 1989, it broke all box office records in its first week. In his version, the Westerner is French again and it is he who commits suicide as the only honorable escape from public betrayal. Over the past 15 years, David Henry Hwang has written more than a dozen plays and screenplays. Born in Los Angeles to a banker and a piano teacher, both Chinese immigrants, Hwang said that when he was young, he considered his Chinese ancestry "a minor thing, like having red hair" (quoted in "Early Years"), but later added that the combination of a desire to delve into Chinese and Chinese-American history for artistic reasons and to be exposed to an active Third World consciousness movement" was which started his interest in his roots while he was in college. He graduated from Stanford University in 1979 with a bachelor's degree in English and briefly taught high school before attending the Yale School of Drama in 1980 and 1981. (Hwang, David Henry: A Literary Biography, "early Years") Besides playwriting, Hwang has also worked as a theater director and has written a number of screenplays, including M. Butterfly and Golden Gate. He also directed a preliminary adaptation of Seven Years in Tibet by Heinrich Harrer. A reviewer writing for Time Magazine declared it "the final scene of M". Butterfly, in which the agony of a soul finally takes precedence over wide-ranging commentary, is one of the most powerful in the history of American theater.... Hwang has the potential to become the first important playwright of American public life since Arthur. Miller, and perhaps the best of all." (Hwang, David Henry: A Literary Biography, "early years") Hwang believes that writing is "a search for authenticity", and for two years Hwang stopped writing. 'write. "I went through a period of writer's block and looked at my work and some of them had more dragons and gongs and other things in them, and some of them seemed like most popular. I wondered if I was repackaging old stereotypes into more intellectually hip forms. "Authenticity is an extremely heated debate among Asian Americans and people in general. The most common criticism heard from an Asian American author is that their work reinforces stereotypes. M. Butterfly has been criticized for reinforcing the stereotype that Asian men are effeminate (Hwang, David Henry: 1994 William L. Abramowitz Guest Lecturer, MIT, April 15, 1994) When asked why Hwang wrote M. Butterfly, he said. answered: "In a certain sense, Mr. Butterfly allowed me to explore the very questions of authenticity that had caused writer's block. I created a French diplomat who was captivated by orientalist fantasy. and in doing so, I explored both the popularity and the seductive power of these stereotypes. I wonder if it is really possible to see the truth, to see the authenticity of a culture,of a loved one or even ourselves. (Hwang, David Henry: 1994 William L. Abramowitz Guest Lecturer, MIT, April 15, 1994) Hwang chooses to address the topic of authenticity because "a lot of these debates come down to a kind of struggle over whether we can arrive at a definition of authenticity. objective truth, whether or not we can define a universal standard of excellence. I think those of us who write about minorities, women, gays, whatever, are often criticized for our lack of authenticity by our own group and, in turn, some of us like. I myself will also criticize others for their lack of authenticity. So I feel like I've been on both sides of that fence and I'm going to frame that a little bit in terms of my own artistic journey. playwright and my journey is essentially personal." (Hwang, David Henry: 1994 William L. Abramowitz Guest Lecturer, MIT, April 15, 1994)M. Butterfly reminds us of the different ways in which American drama and theater engage the imagination and the spirit and some of the most controversial political and social issues of our time has sometimes been considered an anti-American play when in reality it is quite the opposite "I consider it to be a. call for all parties to break through our respective layers of cultural and sexual misperceptions, and deal with each other honestly for our common good, from the common and mutual ground we share as "human beings." (Qtd. in "Afterward") In other words, Hwang feels that writing the play was his chance to open others' eyes to how other people live and once we do that way, we will all be much happier and we will respect everyone. others more on an individual basis. As for the real Papillon, it is said that the affair itself lasted 19 years while, according to Bernard Boursicot, the inspiration for the character of Gallimard, the affair only lasted a few months in 1965. When Bernard, who had the accustomed to getting whatever his heart desired, met Shi Peipu, a former opera singer and inspiration for Song's character, and pursued him with intensity. Now you may be wondering if Bernard knew Shi was a man. Well, despite the story told in M. Butterfly, Shi was not dressed as a woman when they first met and Bernard never saw his lover playing a woman on stage. The person Bernard saw and was attracted to was a young man who was witty and the center of attention at a party. “He told a lot of stories and he was attractive and he was someone I thought I would like to know,” Boursicot says. (Qtd in "Real Butterfly") The two men give conflicting versions of how Boursicot came to believe that his good friend was a woman. Shi, who insists that he never told Boursicot that he was a girl, claims that Bernard arrived at this conclusion by mistake on his own. “I was showing him an album from my theater days and I came across a photo of The Butterfly Story...,” Peipu says. (quoted in "real butterfly") ''I explained this story to him in French, but my French was not very good and when I got to the moment where I said: 'I played the role of the girl ', Mr. Boursicot said, I understand! I'm so happy! » ''Couldn't Shi have put it back in order? “I tried,” he said, “but he didn’t believe me. And I didn't want to pull down my pants. I loved him so much. He was so innocent. It was I who was the criminal.'' (quoted in "real butterfly") Boursicot tells another story: ''. . . We went for a walk on a bridge near the Forbidden City, a place.