A NOTE FROM THE ARTISTIC DIRECTOR By Vincent M. Lancisi, Artistic Director
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laywright David Henry Hwang wrote a fascinating love story, filled with mystery, about a man searching for the perfect woman.
The story is a bizarre and intriguing one, based on the true story of a French diplomat who fell in love with a Chinese opera singer and carried on a near twenty-year relationship before discovering that she was a man— and not only a man, but also a spy for the Chinese government. This was the basis for the trial that ensued in 1986 in Paris. The play you are about to witness is fiction. It explores how this love story might have occurred. Hwang writes a riveting tale about Man vs. Woman, East vs. West, and all in a foreign land undergoing a communist revolution. It’s a story about love, perception, gender and race. It’s about our masculine and feminine ideals. Sometimes life is stranger than fiction. On a vacation last May, my wife and I were touring the south of France. My wife asked our tour driver where he was from, and he explained that he was an immigrant from Budapest. She asked the man what brought him to France. He replied that he was a driver for a famous man, who was the subject of a famous movie with Jeremy Irons—called M. Butterfly. “Have you ever heard of it?” he asked. I was astonished. “You mean were the driver for Bernard Boursicot?”
EVERYMAN THEATRE
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“Yes,” he said, “You know him?” When I explained to our driver who I was and that I would be directing M. Butterfly here at Everyman in September, he asked if I wanted to speak to Bernard. Naturally, I said yes, which resulted a return trip to France just three weeks later, and an incredible inperson meeting between me, Bernard, and actor Bruce Randolph Nelson—who portrays the French diplomat in the performance you are about to see. This once-in-alifetime opportunity to meet the real life M. Butterfly was nothing short of amazing! Although the play veers from the real story of Bernard Boursicot—the result of a playwright’s creative imagination, exploring themes of love and life—there is a lot that David Henry Hwang got right about the psychological underpinnings of its characters. When he wrote the play, it was years before the Internet, and there was little written about the trial in the American press. Yet, I find the accuracy remarkable. Our adventure in France informed us in many ways about how to approach this play and the role of Rene Gallimard. It was also an unbelievably rare chance to speak to the man himself about his life, his love, and to examine closely the human spirit that embodies this play. I hope you find M. Butterfly as riveting and eye opening as I did in all my research and study of the play, the man, the cultures, the myths, and the power of love in life.