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Unit 8. David Henry Hwang. I. Introduction to Chinese American Dramas Pear Garden in the West 1. Chinese Opera comes to America
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Unit 8 David Henry Hwang
I. Introduction to Chinese American Dramas Pear Garden in the West 1. Chinese Opera comes to America On October 8, 1852, at the height of the Gold Rush, a troupe of twenty Chinese male and female jugglers performed in San Francisco’s 2000 seat American Theatre. On October 20, at the same theater, Tung Hook Tong troupe presented the first classical Chinese operas. This marked the beginning of flourishing of Chinese American performing arts of modern America. Chinese opera staged in San Francisco from 1852 to the 1880s differed little from those staged in China at that time.
2. Guan Gong’s image was in the heart of every Chinese immigrant in Chinatown. He was the hero and the spiritual sustainer of the touring theatrical troupes and of the immigrants they served, esp., the seamen, the railroad workers and migrant farm workers, then a major part of the Chinese Community in America.
3. Mei Lan-Fang: Peking Opera Superstar in America Mei Lan-fang, the greatest modern Chinese actor of female roles, introduced Peking Opera to the Western world and America where it was virtually unknown. He excelled in the roles of heroic young women and gave fresh impetus to the struggle to emancipate Chinese women. His 1930 tour to America brought world recognition to Chinese Opera and greatly enhanced the status of acting profession. He performed in Washington, New York, Chicago, San Francisco and other cities.
Mei Lan-Fang in the traditional play The Drunken Concubine; the actor plays the role of Yang Yuhuan, Emperor Minghuan's favorite concubine who, after being rejected, drowns her sorrows in alcohol.
4. During the period between the Jazz Age and World War II, Chinese opera played a most active role in America from San Francisco to New York. New York Chinatown became the main Chinese opera centre, entertained and encouraged more than 15000 Chinese immigrants. For a century from 1850 to 1950s, Chinese opera was performed almost every night somewhere or other in America.
5. By the mid-1950s, almost all the opera houses became cinemas. Because the younger generation of American-educated Chinese American found more entertainment in radio, T.V. and the theatres of the larger society in all their rich verity. Chinese opera’s role as almost sole entertainment and educational and community center in the Chinese American communities ended.
II. New era of Chinese American dramas 1. During the period from 1852 to 1950s, Chinese opera developed a lot, but the images in the plays of Chinese themes in America are always the misunderstanding of the west. The characters in Chinese dramas are ridiculous Chinese servants, pretty Chinese dolls, mysterious detectives and so on, who speak poor English. They are ugly, funny and cunning.
2. Only from the mid-1950s, Chinese American dramas got new developments and features because the rise of ABC (American Born Chinese) dramatists. Representative works: 1) The music play which is adapted from C. Y. Lee’s (黎锦扬) novel Flower Drum Song (《花鼓歌》) became successful. This is the unique Chinese American play which is performed on Broadway by 1960s.
2) The plays of the Chinese American dramatists who began their writing career from 1970s: Diana W. Chou(戴安娜•周): An Asian Man of a Different Color,1981 (《一个白皮肤亚洲人》) Darrell H. Y. Lum(林洪业): Oranges are Lucky, 1981 (《橘子是幸运的》) Laurence Yep(劳伦斯•叶): Pay the Chinaman, 1990 (《中国雇工》) Genny Lim(林小琴) :Pigeons, 1986 (《鸽子》), Paper Angels, 1991 (《纸天使》 ), Bitter Cane，1991 (《苦甘蔗》) Frank Chin(赵健秀):The Chickencoop Chinaman,1972 (《鸡屋华人》), Year of the Dragon,1974 (《龙年》), AIIIEEEEE! An Anthology of Asian American Writers,1974 (《哎呀！美国亚裔作家文集》), The Big AIIIEEEEE! An Anthology of Chinese American and Japanese American Literature,1991 (《大哎呀！美国华裔和日裔文学文集》)
III. David Henry Hwang • Introduction to David Henry Hwang Born in Los Angeles in 1957, David Henry Hwang is the son of immigrant Chinese American parents; his father worked as a banker, and his mother was a professor of piano. Educated at Stanford University, from which he earned his B.A. in English in 1979, he became interested in theater after attending plays at the American Conservatory in San Francisco. By his senior year, he had written and produced his first play, FOB (an acronym for "fresh off the boat"), which marked the beginning of a meteoric rise as a playwright. Hwang attended the Yale University School of Drama from 1980 to 1981. Although he didn’t stay to complete a degree, he studied theater history before leaving for New York City, where he thought the professional theater would provide a richer education than the student workshops at Yale.
Chronology • 1957 Born on August 11 in Los Angeles, California. • 1975-1979 Attends Stanford University, graduates with a B.A. in English. • 1978 First play, FOB, produced at Stanford. • 1979 Teaches at a high school in Menlo Park, California. • 1980-1981 Attends Yale University School of Drama. • 1980 Wins Obie Award for FOB. • 1981 he Dance and the Railroad and Family Devotions produced in New York City.
1983 The House of Sleeping Beauties and The Sound of a Voice produced off-Broadway; publishes Broken Promises: FourPlays; awarded Rockefeller Fellowship. 1984 Awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. 1985 Awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. 1986 Rich Relations produced off-Broadway; As the Crow Flies produced in Los Angeles. 1987 My American Son, a television drama, airs on Home Box Office.
1988 M. Butterfly produced on Broadway and wins the Outer Critics Circle Award, Drama Desk Award, John Gassner Award, and Tony Award; establishes the American Playwrights Project; 1000 Airplanes on the Roof produced in Vienna, Austria. • 1989 Publishes 1000 Airplanes on the Roof. • 1990 Publishes FOB and Other Plays. • 1991 Bondage produced. • 1992 Face Value and The Voyage (libretto for opera) produced. • 1997 Seven Years in Tibet (screenplay for film).
IV. Analysis of M. Butterfly 1. Brief introduction to the play In 1988, when M. Butterfly was produced on Broadway, David Henry Hwang achieved astonishing commercial success as well as widespread acclaim. His awards for this play include the Outer Critics Circle Award for best Broadway play, the Drama Desk Award for best new play, the John Gassner Award for best American play, and the Tony Award for best play of the year. By the end of 1988, Hwang was regarded by many critics as the most talented young playwright in the United States, and since then M. Butterfly has been staged in theaters around the world.
2. The Story of the play The play is based on a bizarre but true story of a French diplomat who carried on a twenty-year affair with a Chinese actor and opera singer, not realizing that his partner was in fact a man masquerading as a woman. The diplomat apparently became aware of the deception only in 1986, when he was charged by the French government with treason—it transpired that his companion had been an agent for the Chinese government, and had passed on sensitive political information that he had acquired from the diplomat. This almost unbelievable story stimulated Hwang's imagination, and from it he created a drama that plays with ideas on a grand scale and manages at the same time to be witty and entertaining. Weaving into the play many parallels with, and ultimately ironic reversals of, Puccini's opera, Madame Butterfly, Hwang explores the stereotypes that underlie and distort relations between Eastern and Western culture, and between men and women.
3. Major themes of the play M. Butterfly explores Western stereotypes concerning Asians and the preconceptions affecting national, racial, and East-West tensions and issues of gender and sexual identity. Hwang has described his play as a “deconstructivist” revision of Madama Butterfly, and critics have asserted that Hwang's dismantling of dominant Western notions of race and gender exposes these ideas to scathing critique. Hwang utilizes such postmodern theatrical techniques as nonlinear narrative, direct address to the audience, and unique staging to dramatize the intersecting discourses of race, gender, nation, and sexuality that infuse his play. On one level, the work functions as an examination of the phenomenon of “Orientalism,” which encompasses a broad spectrum of Western attitudes, prejudices, and stereotypes regarding Asian people, cultures, and nations.
4. Critical reception M. Butterfly remains Hwang's greatest popular and critical success, and has sparked ongoing debate over its socio-political implications in regard to gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, nationhood, and imperialism. Academics have embraced M. Butterfly as a postmodern text that aims to deconstruct received notions of race, gender, and sexuality. Critics of the play have typically fallen into two camps: those who applaud Hwang's deconstructive gender-bending text and his examination of East-West tensions, and those who argue that the play, while ostensibly critiquing Western stereotypes of Asians, ultimately reinforces those stereotypes.
5. Summary M. Butterfly is one of the most celebrated of recent American plays, and the first by an Asian-American to win universal acclaim. It was first produced in 1988 and won numerous awards, including the Tony Award for Best Play of the Year, the New York Drama Desk Award, the Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Broadway play, and the John Gassner Award for the season's outstanding new playwright. M. Butterfly enjoyed a popular run on Broadway and when it moved to London's Shaftsbury Theatre in 1989 it broke all box office records in the first week. M. Butterfly has been celebrated and praised as a powerful metaphor for East-West political relations and as an astute examination of the assimilation of the Asian American into American culture.
V. Reading An excerpt of M. Butterfly VI. Enjoying the movie of M. Butterfly Assignments:Discuss the position and relation between the west and the east, man and woman in the play.
