{"id":174208,"date":"2026-02-12T00:23:13","date_gmt":"2026-02-12T00:23:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/174208\/"},"modified":"2026-02-12T00:23:13","modified_gmt":"2026-02-12T00:23:13","slug":"sf-playhouses-m-butterfly-turns-from-gender-tropes-to-exploration-of-weaponized-identity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/174208\/","title":{"rendered":"SF Playhouse’s ‘M. Butterfly’ turns from gender tropes to exploration of weaponized identity"},"content":{"rendered":"

Giacomo Puccini<\/a>\u2019s opera Madame Butterfly premiered in Milan in 1904. In 1988, David Henry Hwang reimagined its plot in a Tony award-winning play M. Butterfly on Broadway, Puccini\u2019s plot morphed into the story of a French diplomat\u2019s two-decade-plus affair with a Chinese opera singer.<\/p>\n

Edrick Young<\/a>, who plays Song Liling at the current local production of M. Butterfly (runs through March 14 at San Francisco Playhouse), wasn\u2019t aware of the play until he went to Stanford University and joined a theater group Hwang started in 1978, the Asian American Theater Project. Young says that most other members of his cast learned about the play in a critical race or queer studies class.<\/p>\n

\"\"\u2018M. Butterfly\u2019 at SF Playhouse. Photo by Jessica Palopoli<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s interesting to see how it\u2019s been used as this kind of case study of a play, versus us doing it now,\u201d Young said. \u201cWe have a story to actually tell, not just analyze, and it\u2019s a very different experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

When M. Butterfly premiered in the \u201980s, the show\u2019s revelation that Song is a man was a shock to audiences. But Young says that is not so much the focus of this production.<\/p>\n

\u201cDoing this play with Bridgette has been really lovely in trying to explore other ideas,\u201d he said. \u201cI think the idea of surprising audiences with the deception and the reveal is not as compelling anymore. What is more compelling to us, and hopefully to our audiences, are the ideas around hope and love and what happens when our bodies are policed by other people, when our identities are weaponized against us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Young, who has appeared at the Playhouse in Exotic Deadly: Or the MSG Play, as well as in productions at Marin Theatre, Oakland Theater Project, and New Conservatory Theater Center, says many people have an idea of who Song is. He likens the experience of playing the role to his 2024 turn as one of the leads in Tony Kushner\u2019s Angels in America.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt feels like a bit of a challenge, but also an exciting opportunity. When I played Joe Pitt, it was like, \u2018Oh, I think that people have very strong ideas of who Joe Pitt is supposed to be in this story.\u2019 It\u2019s the same thing with Song Liling,\u201d he said. \u201cThis came out almost 40 years ago, and they\u2019ve done a couple productions of it in San Francisco, and 20 years ago, they had a big Broadway revival. People have an idea of what this story is\u2014that this is the Chinese opera singer who was a spy and fooled this diplomat for 20 years.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Playhouse is pulling out the stops for this production. Hwang has also written various screenplays and the libretto for The Monkey King, which had a wildly successful premiere at the San Francisco Opera in November, when critics threw around words like \u201cinventive,\u201d \u201cspectacular,\u201d and \u201cthrilling\u201d.<\/p>\n

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This Madame Butterfly has original music composed by David C. Warner, with the Peking Opera and Puccini\u2019s original as influences. Warner also learned to play some Chinese instruments for the production (!!) and James Ard did sound design.<\/p>\n

\"\"Photo by Jessica Palopoli<\/p>\n

To further create a unique world onstage, director Bridgette Loriaux<\/a> infused the play with movement. Loriaux says that having danced with Argentinian aerialists De La Guarda impacted her work.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe kind of vigorous athleticism with all of the performers really influenced me and inspired me,\u201d Loriaux, who brought her talents to The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time at the Playhouse\u00a0last season, told 48hills. \u201cIt was such a physical act\u2014not just being in the air, but the strength and the endurance and the training that it takes to be in the air.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI have an incredible company of actors who are multi-talented\u2014they sing, they act, they can dance,\u201d she continued. \u201cFor instance, there\u2019s this moment where Gallimard, who is the main character, is looking through a pin-up girl magazine. And usually in the script, it\u2019s just a pin-up girl that he\u2019s talking to that comes alive through the magazine. I thought it was a beautiful opportunity to create this magazine of women that come to life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Young says Hwang originally envisioned M. Butterfly as a musical, and he feels this production pays homage to that. For his character, Young thinks movement shows who he is.<\/p>\n

\u201cA big theme in Song\u2019s life is the idea of performance, and what is authentic identity and what is performed identity?\u201d he said. \u201cOn the surface, I think we see identity is performed through our clothing, our timbre of voice, our posture, and I feel like Bridgette is really blowing that up with how we move across the stage.\u201d<\/p>\n

M. BUTTERFLY runs through March 14. San Francisco Playhouse. More info here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Giacomo Puccini\u2019s opera Madame Butterfly premiered in Milan in 1904. In 1988, David Henry Hwang reimagined its plot…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":174209,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-174208","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-francisco","8":"tag-san-francisco","9":"tag-san-francisco-headlines","10":"tag-san-francisco-news","11":"tag-sf","12":"tag-sf-headlines","13":"tag-sf-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=174208"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174208\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/174209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=174208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=174208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=174208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}