Ntervention of the Invisible Drama: Discursive Strategy of David Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly.

Abstract

The 1980s might be the breakthrough decade for Asian American theatre due to the phenomenal success of David Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly on Broadway. Hwang was one of the new voices in Asian American playwriting in the 1980s. Dramaturgically, Hwang uses the elements of performance convention of Oriental theatre such as the play within-the play, a bare stage, the accumulation of episodic scenes and transvestism. Hwang’s theatrical style of M. Butterfly encourages the stage to struggle and play with the so-called hierarchial dichotomy of West/East, man/woman, inside/outside, and theatre/world, etc. Hwang’s theatrical goal is two-fold: one is to provoke the actors to experience the characters on stage objectively by virtue of transvestism, the other is to secure the ideal audience with imagination who can see both the dramatic world inside of theatre and the real world in society outside of theatre. Hwang’s M. Butterfly intervenes the Western theatre through the mediation of the Asian dramatic convention and the Western romance.