Last updated: November 2024
INTRODUCTION
This subject guide is to support your Year 12 ATAR ENGLISH study of
M. Butterfly
by David Henry Hwang
BOOK COVER
ABOUT THE PLAY
BLURB
M. Butterfly opens in the cramped prison cell where diplomat Rene Gallimard is being held captive by the French government – and by his own illusions. He recalls a time when Song Liling, the beautiful Chinese diva, touched him with a love as vivid, as seductive – and as elusive – as a butterfly.
How could he have known that his true love was, in fact, a spy for the Chinese government–and a man disguised as a woman? The diplomat relives the twenty-year affair from the temptation to the seduction, from its consummation to the scandal that ultimately consumed them both.
DAVID HENRY HWANG
David Henry Hwang’s stage work includes the plays M. Butterfly, Chinglish, Yellow Face, Golden Child, The Dance and the Railroad, and FOB, as well as the Broadway musicals Aida, Flower Drum Song, and Disney’s Tarzan. M. Butterfly was revived on Broadway in 2017. His newest musical, Soft Power, a collaboration with composer Jeanine Tesori, received four Outer Critics Honors, a 2020 Grammy nomination and was a Finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize in Drama. Yellow Face will be revived on Broadway in Fall 2024, starring Daniel Dae Kim.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR – DAVID HENRY HWANG
David Henry Hwang’s stage work includes the plays M. Butterfly, Chinglish, Yellow Face, Golden Child, The Dance and the Railroad, and FOB, as well as the Broadway musicals Aida, Flower Drum Song, and Disney’s Tarzan. M. Butterfly was revived on Broadway in 2017. His newest musical, Soft Power, a collaboration with composer Jeanine Tesori, received four Outer Critics Honors, a 2020 Grammy nomination and was a Finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize in Drama. Yellow Face will be revived on Broadway in Fall 2024, starring Daniel Dae Kim.
David Henry Hwang’s stage work includes the plays M. Butterfly, Chinglish, Yellow Face, Golden Child, The Dance and the Railroad, and FOB, as well as the Broadway musicals Aida, Flower Drum Song, and Disney’s Tarzan. M. Butterfly was revived on Broadway in 2017. His newest musical, Soft Power, a collaboration with composer Jeanine Tesori, received four Outer Critics Honors, a 2020 Grammy nomination and was a Finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize in Drama. Yellow Face will be revived on Broadway in Fall 2024, starring Daniel Dae Kim.
Wang, D. H. (2017). ABOUT — David Henry Hwang. David Henry Hwang. https://www.davidhenryhwang.com/bio
The context
Brown, C. (2022). Huang Ruo & David Henry Hwang: M. Butterfly. Ricordi. https://www.ricordi.com/de-DE/News/2022/09/Huang-Ruo-M-Butterfly.aspx
Wider reading & Viewing
MLC Library resources.
Use the link opposite to locate novels, short stories, poetry books, non-fiction narrative (i.e. autobiographies/ biographies), films and documentaries related to Australian Indigenous issues.
Further online resources