M. Butterfly
The production of M. Butterfly surprised me on so many aspects. This adaption of the story is nothing like anything I imagined, which is what makes it so unique and really makes the audience think and influences them to broaden their perspectives on the play. The set design was very intriguing, it was very minimalist in the beginning with the mobile boards and the chair and then gradually got more elaborate with more moving pieces and furniture. Despite the new props that were added in addition the set boards were always there in some ways to remind the audience that this is a flashback. The transition from scene to scene was signified by the boards so in a way they were almost like the equivalent of pages or chapters in a book. Also as the play went on the set complex, just like Song and Gallimard’s relationship and at the ending scene the set went back to being bare representing the fact that their relationship which once blossomed is now nonexistent.
Another factor of the production which interested me was the exceptional acting. The actors surprised me by breaking the 4th wall on several occasions. This occurred in the arguable cour scene climax when Gallimard says does not want to relive the court scene and also when the officer comes into Songs house and Song asks her for a baby. Gallimard desperately wants another ending for his tragic story and several times he said that he looks for one, but fails to find one. He even tried ending the story at the reunion of him and his butterfly, but Song tells him that the audience must know the entire story, not just the parts he reminisces and fantasizes about. At the end we posed with the question, we don’t know if Gallimard loves Song or really even his “butterfly.” I personally think he was just obsessed and in love with the idea of his butterfly. The fact that women would yield to him was what he subconsciously always wanted and when he saw the opportunity where his fantasy can come true, he took it. Just like Song stated when they first met, European men were infatuated with the idea that an oriental women would fall for a European and would give up her life for him. Song even suggests a role and race reversal, if European women fell for a Chinese businessman who then proceeded to betray her. Song tried to show a more raw take on the opera Madama Butterfly, but Gallimard, ever the romantic, acknowledged it but never understood it and became or took the role Madama Butterfly in the end. The ending scene where Gallimard put Madame Butterflies’ makeup on is when he realized his fate and his tragic story.
M. Butterfly
Butterfly by David Henry Hwang is a wonderful commentary on the occidental obsession of dominating the Orient. This obsession is smartly explained through two lenses. One is the odd situation of Rene Gallimard falling in love with the illusion of a “female” Song Lilang, of a butterfly. The other is the United States’ attempt to suppress the rise of communism in China. Both lenses convey a strategic attack on how the West views the East and how that relates to the way men view women. I find that this play is very deliberate about how it approaches this topic. The play establishes the presence of more noticeable problematic ideas about Western desire to dominate the East (which occurs through music in the opening scenes). Additionally, through the acting, it informs us less easily distinguished faults in our thinking that contribute to toxic ideas about dominating what is deemed “feminine.”
The music in the opening scene begins with traditional Chinese music. The traditional Chinese music and clothing present the western idea of China being an exotic and mysterious culture. Puccini’s music begins to play concurrently with the traditional Chinese music. It seems to represent a misguided attempt at reinventing that culture into something palatable, entertainment for westerners. The practice demonstrated her reveals a broad idea relating to how the West tends to feel entitled to taking bits and pieces of other cultures to amuse itself, thus not appreciating it for its deep cultural context. Instead, the focus is on it’s aesthetic and its appeal to their own culture. Finally, when the Puccini overwhelms the Chinese music, we are reminded of the conflict between Asia and the Western nations that sought to exploit and dominate it.
The acting helped to delineate our own faults when judging characters. Marc is a sexually confident, bold, and crude man who functions as Rene’s foil. The actor for Marc makes this clear in how his self-assured posture, assertive way of walking around a good portion of the stage, and confident tone provides contrast to Rene. In the scene where Marc is attempting to convince Rene to go out with him by describing scantily clad women and sexual adventure, we see how sometimes we can lenient to those who are not outwardly misogynists. Rene states that he is very nervous around women and asking them to sexually engage with him. Marc assures him that he does need to ask these women for permission. Marc is a very obvious representation of outright male negation of a woman’s autonomy. While Rene is condescending towards him and does not take him up on this offer, the fact that he does not point out Marc’s flaws and challenge him shows that he carries dangerous sexist beliefs as well or does not care enough to deal with Marc.
Nonetheless, Marc’s presence allows us to view Rene more fondly, which is something that can occur in our real lives with people we interact with on a daily basis. Our experience with particularly lewd men causes us to be more lenient with men not as blatantly chauvinistic thus underhandedly perpetuating unhealthy beliefs about women. This situation is eye-opening regarding how men can perpetuate fantasies about domination amongst each other.
M. Butterfly
Even though we had expectations set for M. Butterfly based on our in class reading of the script, seeing it presented on a stage in all of its detailed glory was by far way better than I had anticipated. From the costume design to the sound effects and set design, every minute of the show was just as intriguing as the last.
I loved the way that this Broadway production used panels similar to those in the opera itself. The different images pasted upon them, such as those containing the bright colors displaying the salute to the Communist takeover in China and the faces of characters within the Chinese opera, brought all of these aspects to life. The eye catching designs kept us invested and really made me feel like I was fully submersed in the same culture that Gallimard was. Even during the opening scene, when the panels were bare and dimly lit by a single bulb, it felt as if we really were watching a cell. Seeing the environment in which all of these events were taking place created a new perspective, one in which we forget that the people we watch are just characters. They feel real.
Another aspect that I found myself absolutely amazed by was how well Jin Ha took on the role of Butterfly. Especially regarding the tone of voice that Ha used, which I can only imagine took at least months of training and practice, it was captured impeccably well. Small details such as hand motions and the enunciating of words in a particular manner carried the persona of Butterfly so thoroughly that I forgot it was a male depiction. Even during and after the reveal at the end, I found myself so emotionally invested in the relationship between Gallimard and Butterfly. We could so clearly see the pain felt by both of the characters, and the audience certainly felt it too.
M. Butterfly Response
M. Butterfly, I found, is a play that examines the human psyche and self-discovery. It was a very shocking production, even though I had knowledge of the play beforehand. Two aspects of the play intrigued me greatly:
Set Design and Acting— The design was peculiar. The stage was relatively small, yet the props took up very little room. This allowed the play to switch scenes quickly, which I found fitting because the story was narrated through the main character’s soliloquies. When he needed to fast-forward his story, or merely changed his thought, the stage went dark and, within seconds, a new scene was presented. I was really impressed by how quickly the stage crew was able to transform the scenes. It gave the production a cinematic feel, as if I were watching a movie; this is something I haven’t seen in most plays. Often times a production will stick with a constant background; this play had little (maybe 2 or 3) repeated scenes, which I found fascinating. The actors, too, intrigued me, as they had to change their clothing quickly. The actors also had to change their moods and style of speaking in an instant if they were in consecutive scenes; it was all very impressive. Another aspect of the play’s acting that I really enjoyed was 1) their consistent humor throughout the play and 2) their breaking of the fourth wall. Perhaps even more shocking than the play’s finale was how hilariously witty it was. I didn’t expect so many jokes! The actors also “broke the fourth wall” all throughout the play. Because Rene- the protagonist- was telling the audience the story of Madame Butterfly, it allowed for further interaction between the actors and the audience. In a later scene, Rene’s friend Mark jokingly tried to flirt with an audience member, combining the intrigue of humor and fourth-wall breaking.
M. Butterfly: A Madama Butterfly Adaptation
The play M. Butterfly was a very thought-provoking and more modern take on Puccini’s opera, Madama Butterfly. I enjoyed the clever role reversal of the main roles and the commentary on Orientalism in the original work and in society as a whole. I thought that although the dialogue of the characters is light-hearted in many occasions, it also tackles serious topics. There were two things that impressed and challenged me about the play.
First off, the scenery, although pretty minimal, played a crucial role in the play. The backgrounds were made entirely out of giant mobile (I think metal) plates with backgrounds painted on them. There was very little furniture in each scene, like the one chair and bare lightbulb in the prison cell, or the desk and chair for Gallimard’s boss at the Embassy. But the best part comes near the end of the play, when Gallimard cuts the story and declares it over. All of the plates are rolled away and the bare stage itself is used as the background to the fourth-wall breaking scene. Gallimard doesn’t want to finish telling the audience what happened, but the rest of the characters, especially Song, want him to finish because it shows the truth of what Gallimard and Song went through. A bare stage was the perfect setting. The play used creativity in their settings for the play.
The nudity in the play was something that challenged me. One of the most important scenes in the play is when Song undresses in front of Gallimard to erase the feminine illusion he created. Since his facial structure didn’t stop Gallimard from believing Song was a woman, he had to show the most definitive evidence.This scene was another representation of the theme of revealing the whole truth because the characters themselves have to face it.
M. Butterfly Live
Despite having read the play before seeing the production, seeing the play live gave me a whole new perspective and experience of the message behind the play. The first thing that intrigued me were the set design boards and how they were made to simply either fold over or placed at an angle against each other to transition to another scene or location that Gallimard was at. They were also used to show the transition from the original Peking Chinese Opera that focused on love to the warlike images of communism that took over the opera to rally the Chinese together for the revolution. This transition showed me how easily influenced the public was by the government who simply took over the original aesthetic focus of singing and traditional costumes of the Peking Opera to a performance filled with war chants and outfits that carried weapons which ended pointing directly at Gallimard. Another aspect that intrigued me was the exceptional acting throughout the play, especially the scenes between Song and Gallimard and how Gallimard tried stopping the play towards the end refusing to move onto the court scene. I also found it interesting during the few times where the actors broke away from the scene and spoke asides such as the time when Song asked his comrade for a baby and Gallimard stood to the side making a remark of not wanting to show see the woman again. However, the most shocking scene was when Song stripped naked on stage to make it clear to Gallimard that he was a man and it is in this scene that we see how much Gallimard refused to believe that “his butterfly” was a man but it is clear that they did love one another. Overall, the play was well performed and gave another perspective to the play that was not present when only reading it.
The unseen butterfly
Watching the production of Madame Butterfly shocked me more than I ever thought it would despite the fact that I had a lot of prior knowledge of the play beforehand. The first thing that intrigued me were the costumes. I thought they did a wonderful job at showcasing the difference between European and Chinese fashion. It was also very relevant to the time period. The traditional Chinese clothes versus the revolutionary Chinese clothes was also made very clear, especially in the scene where the they performed a play where they tore the traditional clothes from one the actors who had revolutionary clothes underneath in order to send a message. That play made think critically about how determined the revolutionaries were in changing the traditional ways of way.
What also intrigued me was the acting. There was a lot of passion in the words of the characters. I could tell Gallimard was in a desperate search for “his butterfly” and he would do anything to find her. The acting also made me think about what Song had really accomplished over the years. He was in fact a man who loved another man. Despite living in China where homosexuality is considered a disease, he devoted his life to theatre and hoped for the best. He lived and carried the burden of never being able to be his true self. What shocked me the most was the court scene. His blunt words and description while having intercourse with Gallimard really surprised me. What surprised me even more was when he took off his clothes in front of Gallimard. It takes great bravery to strip in front of an entire audience over and over again. In the end I was impressed with the bluntness of this production, how it really did not hold anything back. It contained so many more meaningful messages and themes that the original production did not.
M. Butterfly
The use of Chinese performance interested me. I think it was important for Hwang to include the demonstration of Chinese art in the play as a stark contrast to European opera. It certainly challenged the audience to participate in a more unfamiliar art form. In a sense, it demanded the audience to evaluate their own racial and gender understandings of Eastern Asia. This was very clever on Hwang’s part. Furthermore, it was just eye-opening because it portrayed a type of art that is rarely seen by Broadway.
Another element of this revival that is important to address is the knowledge that viewers already have of Song’s actual background. When the production was first put on Broadway, the fact that Song Liling was a male disguised as a female must have been surprising to most viewers. Because the play has garnered such popularity since then, this must not have been as shocking for viewers the second time around. This situation was addressed in a redirection of surprise. The most shocking part of the story for me was Song’s compassion. His love for Gallimard, which was not prominent whatsoever in the first rendition, was made most evident in the final scene when Gallimard commits seppuku. Originally, Song stood to the side indifferently, but here, he actually approaches Gallimard and expresses intense sorrow over his suicide.
M. Butterfly Prompt
Write a response to the production of M. Butterfly focusing on at least 2 aspects of the production that intrigued or challenged you (i.e. acting, set design, costume, etc.).
