M butterfly play pdf

Table of Contents

Title Page Dedication Copyright Page act one act two act three afterword

“A MAJOR PLAYWRIGHT ... One must be grateful that a play of this ambition has made it to Broadway.”

—New York Times

“Playwright David Henry Hwang has something to say and an original, audacious way of saying it.”

—Wall Street Journal

“A MANY-SPLENDORED THEATRICAL TREASURE. A THRILLING DRAMA. A SENSATIONAL REAL-LIFE STORY OF LOVE AND TREACHERY.”—UPI

DAVID HENRY HWANG, the son of first-generation Chinese Americans, has emerged as one of the brightest young playwrights of this decade. His first play, FOB, originally staged at Stanford University during his senior year, was presented in a revised form in 1980 at the New York Shakespeare Festival’s Public Theater. Since then, he has had numerous plays staged, including the powerful and poignant M. Butterfly, for which he was awarded the 1988 Tony Award for Best Play, the Outer Critics Circle Drama Award and the Drama Desk Award for Best New Play. David Henry Hwang has also collaborated with composer Philip Glass on a science fiction musical drama entitled 1000 Airplanes on the Roof.

To Ophelia

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Published by Plume, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. M. Butterfly was previously published, in its entirety, in American Theatre magazine.

First Plume Printing, March 1989

Copyright © David Henry Hwang, 1986, 1987, 1988 All rights reserved. All inquiries regarding rights should be addressed to the author’s agent, William Craver,

Writers & Artists Agency, 70 West 36th Street, #501, New York, NY 10018.

REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Hwang, David Henry, 1957-

M. Butterfly / by David Henry Hwang : with an afterword by the playwright.

p. cm. eISBN : 978-1-101-07703-0

I. Title. PS3558.W83M2 1989

812’.54—dc19 88-29040

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M. Butterfly, presented by Stuart Ostrow and David Geffen, and directed by John Dexter, premiered on February 10, 1988, at the National Theatre in Washington, D.C., and opened on Broadway March 20, 1988, at the Eugene O‘Neill Theatre. M. Butterfly won the 1988 Tony for best play, the Outer Critics Circle Award for best Broadway play, the John Gassner Award for best American play, and the Drama Desk Award for best new play. It had the following cast:

Scenery and Costumes: Eiko Ishioka Lighting: Andy Phillips Hair: Phyllis Della Music: Giacomo Puccini, Lucia Hwong Casting: Meg Simon, Fran Kumin Production Stage Manager: Bob Borod Peking Opera Consultants: Jamie H. J. Guan & Michelle Ehlers Musical Director and Lute: Lucia Hwong Percussion, Shakuhachi, and Guitar: Yukio Tsuji Violin and Percussion: Jason Hwang Musical Coordinator: John Miller

Playwright’s Notes

“A former French diplomat and a Chinese opera singer have been sentenced to six years in jail for spying for China after a two-day trial that traced a story of clandestine love and mistaken sexual identity.... Mr. Bouriscot was accused of passing information to China after he fell in love with Mr. Shi, whom he believed for twenty years to be a woman.”

—The New York Times, May 11, 1986

This play was suggested by international newspaper accounts of a recent espionage trial. For purposes of dramatization, names have been changed, characters created, and incidents devised or altered, and this play does not purport to be a factual record of real events or real people.

“I could escape this feeling With my China girl...”

—David Bowie & Iggy Pop

Setting

The action of the play takes place in a Paris prison in the present, and in recall, during the decade 1960 to 1970 in Beijing, and from 1966 to the present in Paris.

act one

scene 1

M. Gallimard’s prison cell. Paris. Present.

Lights fade up to reveal Rene Gallimard, 65, in a prison cell. He wears a comfortable bathrobe, and looks old and tired. The sparsely furnished cell contains a wooden crate upon which sits a hot plate with a kettle, and a portable tape recorder. Gallimard sits on the crate staring at the recorder, a sad smile on his face.

Upstage Song, who appears as a beautiful woman in traditional Chinese garb, dances a traditional piece from the Peking Opera, surrounded by the percussive clatter of Chinese music.

Then, slowly, lights and sound cross-fade; the Chinese opera music dissolves into a Western opera, the “Love Duet” from Puccini’s Madame Butterfly. Song continues dancing, now to the Western accompaniment. Though her movements are the same, the difference in music now gives them a balletic quality.

Gallimard rises, and turns upstage towards the figure of Song, who dances without acknowledging him.

GALLIMARD: Butterfly, Butterfly ...