whoops

conundrum:

1) i am a very creative person who is constantly reworking ideas and thinking of new projects

2) i am a very lazy person who also doesn't follow through with things for fear of failure.

trying to fix that. first step - starting up on this blog again. more to come soon.

Yes, I like plays that are essentially just vehicles for great acting.

I am also a big fan of Bent, by Martin Sherman.

It is a really, really bleak play. (In the 1930s, an openly gay German man is arrested by Nazis and sent to Dachau. On the train, he is forced to kill his boyfriend, pretends he's Jewish because he's afraid of being labeled as a homosexual, and then has sex with a girl's corpse to prove that he's straight. At Dachau, he falls in love with another gay man, and when that man is shot by Nazi guards the protagonist commits suicide by rushing into an electric fence.)

Really. Really. Bleak.

This is another play that requires very talented, mature, understanding, and emotive actors in order to make it work. There's so much pain in this play (obviously), but there is also joy and love —and all of it has to come across without seeming trite or melodramatic.

Any actor who stars in this play has a lot to live up to, as well.

Recognize that guy?

It's Ian McKellen.

He starred in the original 1979 production in London.

And this guy?

Yup.

It's Richard Gere.

He starred in the 1980 Broadway production before hitting it big with films like American Gigolo (1980) and An Officer and a Gentleman (1982).

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Now I am not placing Richard Gere in the same category as Sir Ian McKellen. I'm just sayin' —big names.

Also, I would have LOVED to see the 1979 London production. Can you imagine how powerful that would have been? (Emotionally powerful, not wizard-battling-Balrog powerful. Nerd alert.)

Break Time!

This is/was not meant to be a blog just about DHH or M. Butterfly. Too many thoughts about that particularly play are in my head, is all.

As a break from all that, I also want to do Philip Glass Buys a Loaf of Bread because IT'S FUCKING INSANE.

I'm exhausted from last night's post, so here are two video clips of Gallimard and Song's first interaction.

The first is from the wildly successful Broadway production (closing after 2 years and 777 performances), starring John Lithgow and B.D. Wong. Embedding has been disabled, so please watch here.

The second is from David Cronenberg's 1993 film adaptation, starring Jeremy Irons and John Lone. Skip to about 7:20.

I am fascinated by how differently Wong and Lone play the role of Song (at least in this moment, as I've only seen this one clip of the Wong version). I think I prefer Lone's interpretation, but again I only have this little moment to compare. Which do you prefer?

Finding the man to play the man playing the woman

I first read M. Butterfly two years ago in a Queer Literature course at U of T. As soon as I finished reading it, I knew that I wanted to direct M. Butterfly one day. I also knew that I wouldn't do it while I was still in university.

It wasn't because I didn't have directing experience. I'd just finished co-directing a very successful medley of four one-act plays with a dear friend, and as an actor I'd been around enough directors —some amazing, most okay, and a special few decidedly awful— to know how to run a good show. Granted, I had never directed a multi-act drama that would require several set changes and some more advanced technical requirements, but I was fairly confident that I could handle that.

The two main reasons why I didn't pursue M. Butterfly in university:

- The majority of a university theatre production's audience are friends and family of the actors, and I wasn't confident that they would wish to see their loved ones in a rather sexually explicit play, or that any university theatre group would want to put its reputation on the line for my sake.

- I did not believe that with my limited resources and connections I would find an East Asian man willing and able to play Song Liling with the depth and maturity that the character deserves.

Both are problems that could be solved by putting on a non-university production, but at the time I had neither the means nor the experience to have it done elsewhere (well, I still don't have the means. Yet.)

Anyway. Back to explaining.

Song is a man who is purposefully passing himself off as a woman. He is not a drag queen. He is not a vamp. He is a person whose career and life depend on the illusion that he is a real woman. True, he does exaggerate the "Oriental" qualities that Gallimard believes are paramount to an Asian woman (e.g. subservience, modesty, shame) —but he still operates within those very real bounds. And when in the final act Song sheds his female persona (and his clothes), we must believe in his masculinity as much as we do in his femininity.

(So yes, Song does appear naked on stage. More specifically, he strips in front of Gallimard in an attempt to prove that Gallimard was in love with a person for 26 years, not with a fantasy. Other scenes call for kissing and fondling, while more allude to oral and anal sex. As I said, it's fairly sexually explicit.)

And it's not as if I think that all university-aged people break down into fits of giggles over or are repulsed by sexuality, homosexuality, etc. But I do need someone mature enough to distance personal feelings from the character and the situations —sexual or not— he would be placed in. I need that strength and commitment and, honestly, university students are already juggling school, other hobbies, and personal lives —it makes me nervous having seen how many students take on too many responsibilities and then let important things like passing courses and being healthy fall to the wayside. I don't want to make someone's life unmanageable. I want someone who will not let thousands of dollars worth of education and/or his own sanity be overshadowed by one role.

Finally, I wanted to find an East Asian man to play Song. I have seen YouTube clips and read reviews of productions that have a Caucasian man in "yellow face" (incidentally, that's the name of another DHH play), and it's just… not what I want. I want M. Butterfly to be the focus of attention, and cross-race casting would jeopardize that. Cross-race casting is not out of the question, but it is far from ideal.

(And yes, I would cast a Japanese or Korean man in a Chinese role, if he were the most appropriate choice. I do think that general aesthetic is very important, given that the play revolves around one man's inability to see anything but dichotomies, but that ethnicity is more flexible. And if you take offense, I will remind you that you are reading my personal, subjective ideas. I don't expect you to agree, but I hope you understand.)

So that's why I thought that I would need to cast a wider net (a butterfly net? Wow, that was awful) in order to get the Song that I wanted.

Or I may have been grossly mistaken, and I could have done an incredible production of M. Butterfly with university backing, but have been using a bunch of excuses for the past 2 1/2 years to avoid addressing my own fears and shortcomings.

… I think it's the former.

"I have a vision. Of the Orient. That, deep within its almond eyes, there are still women. Women willing to sacrifice themselves for the love of a man. Even a man whose love is completely without worth." - M. Butterfly, III.iii

It's plot time!

This synopsis does include the ending, so… spoiler alert?

Rene Gallimard, a former diplomat wallowing in French prison, recalls his 26-year affair with a Beijing opera singer named Song Liling, and how it all began when he saw Song perform the famous aria from Gallimard's favourite play: Puccini's Madama Butterfly.

Unlike his other connections with women, Gallimard's seduction of and relationship with Song is perfect. He is the dominant one. His self-confidence is bolstered by Song's absolute devotion and obedience, save for one condition: she never appears naked before him. But what does that matter? In all other ways, he has found his Butterfly.

Their lives become increasingly more intertwined, spanning the Chinese cultural revolution, Gallimard's disgraceful demotion, the arrival of a son, and the forging of a new life together in France. It is not until 1986 that Gallimard finds himself accused of treason, having stolen and shared state information with Song —who is not only a Chinese spy, but a man as well.

The revelation that Song is a man sparks international interest and ridicule. Gallimard, however, mourns only for the loss of the fantasy he lived for over two decades. Faced with the truth of his great love affair, betrayed by his lover, Gallimard retreats even further into delusion. In the final scene, Gallimard dresses himself as Butterfly and commits seppuku, confirming that Song was never Gallimard's Butterfly —it had always been the other way around.

… Yup.

M. Butterfly

I was a bit conflicted about starting this blog off with M. Butterfly by David Henry Hwang. On one hand, it's my all-time favourite play and my dream production. On the other hand, the thought of expressing all of my ideas is daunting and vaguely threatening to my fragile artistic self-confidence. So I've decided to do this one in installments —as much for my sanity as for that of the reader's.

So… here we go.

My copy of M. Butterfly includes a wonderfully funny, insightful, and encouraging afterword by DHH. This was the second last paragraph:

"M. Butterfly has sometimes been regarded as an anti-American play, a diatribe against the stereotyping of the East by the West, of women by men. Quite to the contrary, I consider it a plea to all sides to cut through our respective layers of cultural and sexual misperception, to deal with one another truthfully for our mutual good, from the common and equal ground we share as human beings."



It sounds overly dramatic and —like most artistic notes I've read— self-important. But I had the pleasure to see DHH speak at Hart House a few months ago, and I know he is sincere. M. Butterfly is more than a clever interpretation of a scandalous, real-life event. It is a poetic and poignant conflict between illusion and truth.

Stay tuned for more!

First up:

Again, with purpose.

Welcome to my second attempt at blogging!

My first try lasted about a week, doomed from the start by a crippling sense of self-awareness and the temporary belief that being bored was a good reason to start forging an online identity.

I believe that this time is different.

I love theatre.
I love directing.
I love watching a production come together.
I love the crazy shit that always happens at the worst moments (or at least, I love telling stories about said shit at a later, less stressful time).

I don't want to be a professional director. I don't believe that a life on (or behind) the stage is the life for me. But there are so many plays that I love/am fascinated by/wish to see put up —I need to tell someone about them all.

(And while I realize that this is the Internet and I have no control over someone's copy/paste function, please don't steal my ideas. That wouldn't be cool.)