The Production of M. Butterfly and the Reflection of Culture Essay - 1

The Production of M. Butterfly and the Reflection of Culture - Essay Example Criticisms towards M. butterfly range from arguments or debates over an illustration of sexualities and ethnicity, Orientalism politics, theatre to performance theories. As such, this essay explores and analyzes the production of M. Butterfly and ways through which the play manifests Asian scenic designs, tales, costume designs, movements, and sounds to the whole world. The play incorporates various Asian elements. For instance, the stage design has a hanamichi, the actors wear Japanese traditional clothes and the storyline depicts the notion of an Asian woman who is slender, beautiful and submissive. Additionally, M Butterfly employs the element of cross-dressing which is a Chinese characteristic commonly used by Beijing opera actors. All these elements in the play represent Asia. Madama Butterfly by Giacomo Puccini inspired David Hwang into writing the M. Butterfly play. Hwang based his play on a true story. Renne Gallimard, the protagonist works as a civil servant in the French Embassy in China. The protagonist falls in love with Song Liling, the Chinese opera diva while in the process of watching Madama Butterfly. They immediately establish a love relationship that proceeds to last more than two decades. The end of the love passion comes when authorities sentence Gallimard of treason with subsequent imprisonment. To his surprise, the protagonist discovers that the purported lover was a man and a government investigator. Gallimard commits suicide for failing to accept the truth. The play by Hwang has three acts. Act 1 has thirteen scenes whereas Act 2 has seven and three scenes in the last Act. M. Butterfly presents a fictionalized story of a French diplomat who was in a relationship with an Asian, specifically Chinese singer for more than twenty years without actually knowing that his beautiful obedient and submissive lover was actually a male. Gallimard views himself as being clumsy when it comes to love. However, he considers himself  blessed since he has a devoted beautiful and exotic woman (Liling Song).