M. Butterfly

Superior Essays
The play M. Butterfly, was written by David Henry Hwang. To help the actors gain a complete understanding of the play, a resource packet with references to the people and events that the play is based on, information on the role of women in 1960s China, and information on the opera Madama Butterfly would be provided to them.
The characters Rene Gallimard (Hwang, pg. 1672 line 1) and Song Liling (Hwang, pg. 1679 line 4) are based loosely off Bernard Boursicot and Shi Pei Pu, respectively, and their relationship in the 1960s followed by the discovery of Shi Pei Pu’s deception and then the resulting case of espionage that they were convicted for by the French Government. Also, while the play depicts Gallimard being in jail at age 65, Boursicot was actually convicted and released before the age of 50. By understanding the true story that the play M. Butterfly is based on, the actors in the production can more accurately understand where the playwright is coming from in all of his choices of how the characters spoke and interacted with each other. Rene Gallimard, though portrayed as a high-ranking French diplomat in the play, was based on Bernard Boursicot, who “was a 20-year-old high school dropout who had finagled a job as an accountant at the newly opened French Embassy in Beijing” (Walder, 2009). Boursicot had admitted to having sexual relations with men before, and had been in living with a male partner while trying to get Shi Pei Pu and the boy he assumed was his son, Shi Du Du, to join him and live with him in Paris. Boursicot had also been involved with women before. This information would help the actor understand that the events of the play are based on a true story, but that many aspects may have been changed. Shi Pei Pu, the person Song Liling was based on, was 26 when he met Boursicot and claimed to be a female forced to dress as a male to appease his fathers want of a son. By doing this Shi Pei Pu was able to steal into Boursicot’s affections. He acquired a boy from a minority in China whom he passed off as Boursicot’s son. However, after being caught and convicted, and eventually pardoned, Shi Pei Pu still maintained some strained contact with Boursicot and before Shi Pei Pu’s death, Boursicot claims that Shi had told him that he still loved him. With this information, the actor can possibly draw on the idea that throughout the course of the show and their lives, Song did in fact fall in love with Gallimard. They can also understand that the events in the play actual actions of a real person and can draw on that knowledge to help bring life to the character. During the course of M. Butterfly, Song is pretending to be a female in the 1960s and needs to have a complete understanding of the female culture in China and the male expectations of the French in order to gain Rene’s favor and in turn information to feed to the Chinese government. The cast must also understand what was going on in the world during the time period that the play is set in. In 1958, the Great Leap Forward Movement began in
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This production sent out the message that the need to feel accepted and loved can lead people to do things that they never thought they were capable of and/or never wanted to do all while not allowing themselves to be loved by those who do and instead feeling isolated. But, when vulnerable and willing to be helped and help others can people overcome the need and allow themselves to feel wanted.
During the climax of the production, when JD kills Kurt and Ram, Veronica makes a choice between going along with JD’s plan of making the murders look like suicides or not. In an attempt to feel loved by someone after being horribly rejected by everyone she thought were her friends, Veronica went along with JD’s plan because he said he loved her and wanted to be with her. In turn, she ended up fueling his idea of being able to change the world by killing people who wrong them or

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