These are just some ramblings of mine about staging plays...

One of the most interesting things about writing and then staging a play are the multiple theatrical interpretations and creative license which directors take on when producing the play for an audience. The youtube video of the stage production of M. Butterfly which Vivian Lin posted surprised me a lot and made me wonder about the director and, presumably, the author’s choice in setting the seemingly light-hearted tone of the play. While reading the book, I had thought the drama was a more serious one, but the clip changed my opinion a lot and surprised me. Though, I may be jumping to conclusions about the comedic overtones of the play, especially since the video clip was only three minutes, but I did get the impression that there were supposed to be many light-hearted moments and the back of the book does describe the play as a “slyly humorous” drama.

I was thinking perhaps it’s easier for an audience to be receptive to some of the issues at hand—queerness and sexuality, East-West interactions and fetishes, imperialism and colonized bodies, patriarchy, etc.—if they were dealt with in a light-hearted manner? Does it make it more accessible? Is it telling that Hwang originally wanted this play to be a musical rather than a play? He says in his afterword that “I would like to think, however, that the play has retained many of its musical roots.” (96) I think it’s safe to assume that people generally see musicals as these fun, over-the-top productions with show tunes and numerous song and dance numbers and jazz fingers, and if Hwang has the same impression of musicals, then did he originally want his story to take on these jazzy characteristics? I can definitely see M. Butterfly as a candidate for a musical, complete with rampant use of stereotyped characters and choreographed numbers with groups of Asian girls in cheongsams singing and dancing. In the realm of entertainment, and in this particular case, of stage productions, if the playwright knows that the content of a play is controversial to a mainstream audience or if the issues presented accuse the average person in the audience of similar crimes (i.e. Asian fetish, oppressing the East, fears of homosexuality), is it more “safe” to take a comedic or satirical approach rather than an angry one?

I’ve seen other kinds of stage performances, like spoken word by Asian-American artists, which also dealt with similar issues like colonized bodies, fetish, rape, but did so in an angry, confrontational manner. These performances seem like they are more cathartic experiences for the individual performer rather than a show of sorts or entertainment for the audience. And because many such performances are angry and emotional, I think they also force the audience to address their own involvement in perpetuating certain cycles of violence, oppression, etc (especially in those spoken word performances which address or accuses “you”). So, I guess, one of the points that I wanted to get at was whether you think a play or musical, especially ones dealing with issues of oppression and identity, that is geared towards a mainstream audience (like, for example, a Broadway audience) should offend, attack, or accuse the audience, or at least make them realize their complicity in such crimes? Rather than merely being a show which simply allows for thoughtful commentary by people leaving the theater, who saunter out of the theater “talking not only about the sexual, but also the political, issues raised by the work” (98) and then forgetting about the issues at hand the next day as they go about their own business.

I guess I’m writing this because I was slightly disappointed when I watched the play on youtube. I had expected a production that would’ve been more solemn, darker, more serious to the subject matter. Instead I got B.D. Wong interacting with John Lithgow in a very playful manner when talking about “Oriental” women with white men, and even when he reversed the roles in an attempt to show how ridiculous and offensive it was to glamorize the death of Asian women for white men, Wong wasn’t angry or accusatory at all, merely playful and mild-mannered. He's a great actor, but it was surprised me that this was the approach the director and playwright wanted to take. The audience’s laughter in response to the acting reminded me of the laugh tracks that accompany silly sitcoms. And as I was watching this, I kept thinking, “This isn’t funny! Why doesn’t America get it?” Can we tackle a serious subject without resorting to comedy and satire? Maybe I’m jumping to conclusions after only watching a 3-minute clip of the play, but my gut reaction after I watched that clip was that if the point of the stage production was to make people laugh at a story of mistaken identity, with witty banter, then maybe the bigger point was lost, and the conversation and self-reflection that this subject ought to provoke wasn’t achieved?