Based on a true story that stunned the world, M. Butterfly begins in the cramped prison cell where diplomat René Gallimard is held prisoner by the French government and 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 vivid, seductive - and elusive - as a butterfly. How could he have known, then, that his ideal woman was, in fact, 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 Song and Butterfly have to say about what really happened? Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essayM. Butterfly, by David Henry Hwang, is set in different places and time periods. It begins in the present, in the Gallimard prison cell in Paris. Gallimard is the former French diplomat who was imprisoned for treason, and as he tells his story, scenes flashback from locations in Beijing, China from 1960 to 1970 to locations in Paris from 1966 to the present. However, Hwang was not the first person to write the story. The original story originated in 1898 when John Luther Long was inspired by his sister's chance meeting with the adult son of the real Butterfly. Not long after, the story Madame Butterfly appeared in Century Magazine. According to her sister Butterfly's "husband" he was a British trader and her suicide attempt had failed. (Origins, 1) David Belasco, the Broadway legend and writer, later wrote the one-act play Madame Butterfly, which premiered on March 5, 1900 at the Herald Square Theater in New York to great acclaim. Aside from opening at a time when Pinkerton has already been gone for two years, the show closely follows the story of Long's original. However, Belasco believed that there would be more drama if Butterfly managed to kill herself. Then Pinkerton would arrive in time to cradle the dying body with remorse. 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 light effect showed the passing of the night. It was a success. (Origins, 2)Later in the same year, Belasco's play was presented in London at the Duke of York's Theatre, this time in the program with Jerome K. Jerome's Miss Nobbs. Puccini was in London for the premiere of Tosca at Covent Garden and saw the show on opening night. Even without fully understanding the dialogue, Puccini was so moved by the opera that he immediately knew he wanted to create an opera based on the story and ran backstage to meet Belasco. The first version of Puccini's opera failed at La Scala in 1904, but in the same year a revised version succeeded, the one we hear today, one of the most frequently produced operas in the entire repertoire. As an opera, Madame Butterfly is a staple of even the most innovative opera houses and has been seen virtually everywhere opera can be seen. Each director put their own stamp on it. (Origins, 2) In Hwang's version he touches on 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 dealings with Eastern culture. First, he had to show these stereotypes in operation. Negative Western images of the Chinese occur frequently throughout the play. Gallimard complains that the Chinese are arrogant, an opinion he learned in Paris,where, according to him, it is a common belief.M. Butterfly is one of the most celebrated recent American works and the first by an Asian American to achieve universal acclaim. It was first produced in 1988 and 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 enjoyed popular success on Broadway and when it transferred to London's Shaftsbury Theater in 1989 it broke first-week box office records. In his version the Westerner is once again French and it is he who takes his own life 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 professor, both Chinese immigrants, Hwang said that when he was young he considered his Chinese ancestry "a minor detail, like having red hair" (qtd in "early years") but he later added that the combination of a desire to delve into Chinese and Chinese-American history for artistic reasons and exposure to an active third world consciousness movement" was what began to interest him in his roots while in college. He graduated from Stanford University in 1979 with a 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") In addition to playwriting, Hwang he also worked as a theater director and wrote numerous screenplays including M. Butterfly and Golden Gate. He also made a preliminary adaptation of Heinrich Harrer's Seven Years in Tibet. A critic for Time Magazine declared "the final scene of M. Butterfly, when the agony of a soul finally takes over wide-ranging commentary, is among the most vigorous works in the history of the American theater... Hwang has the potential to become the first major playwright of American public life since by 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. "I went through a period of writer's block and I looked at my work and some of it had more dragons and gongs and things like that, and some of it seemed to be more 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 an Asian-American author hears is that his or her work reinforces stereotypes. M. Butterfly has been criticized for reinforcing the stereotype of effeminate Asian men (Hwang, David Henry: 1994 William L. Abramowitz Guest Lecturer, MIT, April 15, 1994) When asked why Hwang wrote M. . Butterfly, responded: “In a way, M. Butterfly allowed me to explore the same issues of authenticity that writer's block had caused. I created a French diplomat who was caught up in all the orientalist fantasies and, in doing so, I was exploring both the popularity and seductiveness of these stereotypes through the combination of fantasy and reality present in the work I wonder if it is really possible to see the truth, see the authenticity of a culture, of a loved one, or even of ourselves." (Hwang, David Henry: 1994 William L. Abramowitz Guest Lecturer, MIT, April 15, 1994) Hwang chooses to address the topic of authenticity because " many of these debates boil down to a sort of struggle over whether it is possible to reach a definition of authenticity." truthobjective, regardless of 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 being inauthentic by our own group, and in turn, some of us like it. myself, I also criticize other people for being inauthentic. So I feel like I've been on both sides of the fence and I'll frame this a little bit in terms of my artistic journey as a playwright and my journey is essentially personal." (Hwang, David Henry: 1994 William L. Abramowitz Guest Professor, MIT, April 15, 1994)M. Butterfly reminds us of the various ways in which American drama and theater grapples with imagination and spirit and with some of the most controversial political and social issues of our day an anti-American work when in reality it is exactly the opposite. "I take it as a call to all parties to overcome our respective layers of cultural and sexual misperception, to deal with each other truthfully for our mutual good, from the common and mutual ground we share as human beings." (Qtd. in "Afterward") In other words, Hwang believes that writing the play was his chance to open others' eyes to the way others live and, once we do that, we will all be much happier and respect each other. others more like individuals. As for the real Butterfly, it is said that the actual relationship went on for 19 years when, according to Bernard Boursicot, inspiration for Gallimard's character, the relationship lasted only a few months in 1965. When Bernard, who was used to getting everything what he wanted, he met Shi Peipu, the former opera singer, and the inspiration for Song's character haunted 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 play a woman on stage. The person Bernard saw and was attracted to was a witty young man who was the center of attention at a party. “He told a lot of stories and was attractive and 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 he never told Boursicot he was a girl, says Bernard mistakenly came to that conclusion on his own. ''I was showing him an album of memories from when I was at the theater, and I came across a photo from The Story of the Butterfly. . . ", says Peipu. (qtd in "Real Butterfly") ''I was explaining this story to him in French, but my French wasn't very good and when I got to the point where I said, 'I played the role of the girl, 'Monsieur Boursicot said, I understand! I am so happy!' ''Couldn't Shi have set him straight?' 'I tried,' he says, 'but he didn't believe me.' ' (qtd in "real butterfly")Boursicot tells a different story: ''We went for a walk on a bridge near the Forbidden City, a very romantic place as the person in Chinese legend. Shi said she was her mother's third daughter, -- Shi had two older sisters, and this when she was born. Her mother, fearing that her husband would divorce her for not having a child, decided of raising Shi as a boy. Shi said I have to keep this secret to protect his family. He had no hair.